President Mary McAleese recounted today how a machine-gun attack on her family's house in 1970s Belfast left them homeless, as she visited a project helping people living on Scotland's streets.
Mrs McAleese told those gathered at St Catharine's Homeless Project run by the Irish Mercy Sisters in Edinburgh that she recognised the insecurity of a life without a permanent roof over your head.
As she visited the centre during her three-day trip to Scotland, she referred to her family's experience, saying: "I have my own brief personal experience of homelessness, of losing a family home and of feeling that awful insecurity that comes from such awful turbulence in a life.
"Back then, exactly as here, it was an order of nuns who came to our rescue and gave us the helping hand that helped us get through a rough patch and find our feet again on more solid ground.
"That is why it gives me such a deep sense of privilege to be here and to see lives so hurt by life's ups and downs drawn into a community of care where their needs at are the centre, the very heart, of all that goes on here."
Mrs McAleese's family left Belfast's Ardoyne area for Rostrevor in Co Down in the 1970s after loyalists armed with a machine-gun targeted the family's home in a sectarian attack at the height of the Troubles.
She told those gathered at St Catharine's that the Irish community were familiar with homelessness, displacement, emigration and needing help and support.
"These things were almost standard characteristics of the life of Irish emigrants but in today's more prosperous, fast-moving, high-achieving world to be homeless is to feel more lost, more frightened, more bewildered than ever before.
"What a joy it is therefore to be in a place where the homeless are not overlooked or forgotten but are cared for with such love and faith," she said.
Scotland is the first official visit of 2007 for Mrs McAleese, who is ccompanied by her husband Martin.