Homelessness is worse than it was 30 years ago. There are more young people homeless and more people with chronic drug and alcohol problems living between hostel accommodation and the streets.
Though the evidence is as much anecdotal as it is empirical, there is no doubt in the mind of the largest homeless charity that things are as bad as ever. Thirty years since it made its first soup-run in Dublin, and opened the doors of its first emergency shelter in Limerick, the Simon Community perhaps has as much to regret as to celebrate.
"Homelessness absolutely could and should have been eliminated, particularly at a time when the economy is so healthy," says Conal Mac Riocaird, national director of Simon. "The biggest reason it has not been is a succession of government housing policies overwhelmingly weighted in favour of home ownership rather than housing provision."
Simon's profile is today as much a campaigning as a caring one - a long way from the small group of volunteers which grew around Anton Wallich-Clifford in 1969-70. Having founded the first Simon Community in St Leonard's-on-Sea in Sussex in 1963, he visited Ireland in February 1969.
He is said to have originally been inspired by the work of social reformers such as Abbe Pierre who founded the Emmaus Community in France and Mario Borrelli who worked with homeless children in Naples.
As recorded in the new photographic collection, Images Of Simon, published to mark its 30 years' work, Wallich-Clifford and these reformers shared an attraction to "practical social justice and a belief in reaching out to and offering friendship to people who had been marginalised".
Following an address by Wallich-Clifford to a meeting in Dublin, the first Simon soup-run in Dublin was organised. Since then, volunteers have been dispensing soup, sandwiches and a few words of friendship to homeless people throughout the State nightly.
For people such as Martin, the volunteers who crouched down to talk to him in early December last year, behind the Westbury Hotel in Dublin's city-centre, were "angels".
With temperatures near freezing, his hands drew colour from the warmth of the soup in the paper cup they handed him. The soup went cold while he thanked them over and over and they had to give him another. Again he thanked them and when they offered him a dry blanket he began to cry.
"They're angels you know," he said. "If it wasn't for them I think I'd just die here."
There were many like Martin that night. Many like the boy outside the Spar shop on Dame Street who with his shock of ginger hair and splash of freckles across his face looked more like 12 than the 15 years he claimed.
He was grateful for the soup but delighted with the cigarettes given to him by a passerby. Many like the 20 or so teenagers who gathered beneath Butt Bridge waiting for the rendezvous with the Simon volunteers and their vegetable soup and ham or cheese sandwiches.
The community encounters about 3,000 such people each year, estimates Mr Mac Riocaird, through its centres in Cork, Galway, Dublin and Dundalk. "And that is just those we see. I think we could safely estimate that there are about 10,000 homeless people in Ireland between those in hostels, on the streets and in bed and breakfasts.
"Things have worsened in a number of senses. In absolute terms we are certainly encountering more people actually living on the streets. And in relative terms the gap between those at the bottom and the rich has definitely widened."
Though the root causes of homelessness remain the same, Mr Mac Riocaird says the profile of many homeless has changed over the past 30 years. Volunteers are noticing an increasing number of middle-aged men who grew up in industrial schools. They are seeing more young people and more drug users - many homeless because they are not wanted in their own communities.
The economic health of the economy has ironically exacerbated homelessness, he continues.
"If you don't own your own home you are dependent on renting. Property prices are forcing people to look at renting."
The private rented sector, he says, is "ill-equipped" to handle rising demand and Government housing policy is "one-track" - favouring couples and families. It's not an impossible situation to redress, he says.
"Finland halved its homelessness figures in less than a year because its government set about providing a range of housing - private-rented, public, voluntary and owned. There has to be joined-up thinking between all sectors on moving the bias away from home ownership.
"Otherwise we will continue to have a situation where on one corner a couple are queueing to buy a £1 million apartment while on the other a man is queueing for a bed for the night."
Images of Simon - 30 Years of the Simon Community in Ireland is available from Eason's, price £8.99