Fionnuala's Story (*not her real name)

Fionnuala was the first person I spoke to and questioned when I decided to embark on this personal project. I walked over O’Connell Bridge on a dark November evening and encountered her sitting against the wall wrapped up in a sleeping bag and wearing gloves which she informed me had been donated by the Dublin Simon Community rough sleeper team. She looked pretty young and was initially sceptical when I asked her if I could ask her some questions. In fact, she told me, in a croaky voice that she had a sore throat and couldn't speak. However, I offered to show her my questions if she would like and assured her that I wasn’t a Guard or a journalist, just a concerned citizen. This appeared  to reassure her and  cure her sore throat (!) and she then seemed pretty willing to answer my questions though perhaps some of the ‘facts’ may need to be taken with a pinch of salt! 

She told me that she was from Clonmel, Co Tipperary and was 20 years old.She had completed secondary school but never went on to further education  She is a recovering heroin addict and is now on methadone.  Although there is a clinic in Tipperary that she could attend, apparently the waiting list was approximately 18 months so herself and her partner moved to Dublin where they had been staying in a hostel in Blessington Street for some time. She had been some months in Dublin and had only officially been ‘homeless’ for 2 weeks. When I asked her to clarify that for me, she explained that she meant ‘sleeping out’.  When I pressed her as to why she was on the streets, she told me that it was because of a situation that arose when herself and her partner lost the lease on the flat that they had been staying in Cabra.  According to  her, she had to go to a funeral for a number of days and left the rent (€120) with the caretaker to give to the landlord in their absence. When herself and her partner returned from the funeral, new tenants had moved in and the landlord had gotten rid of all their stuff.  She told me that they never got the 120 euros back.

When I enquired as to whether or not she was able to claim social welfare, she informed me that she had up until she lost her place in Cabra. She is not able (or not willing) to return to Tipperary and move back home due to “family problems”. Her mother left her at the age of 3 and her father did not approve of her Protestant boyfriend or her drug problem! She has been moved on by the Gardaí on one or two occasions and was in court recently for “tapping” (begging) and got a warning from the judge. She said the court was full of Romanians and Dubliners and that it was amazing that Irish people would give money to Romanians but “not their own”

When I asked her what services she had linked in with, she mentioned that she had availed of the night bus but that it had since been stopped since the 18^th of September (will have to verify this information) and that she had stayed in the homeless shelter in Capel Street.