SLOVAKIAN agriculture graduates Tomas and David are in the unenviable situation of being unemployed, homeless drug addicts in a foreign country. This may not be their native land, but they still feel enough shame about their situation to ask that their real names be changed for this interview.

Tomas (27) arrived in Ireland two years ago to work with a catering company. He had used drugs before, but was clean when he arrived. However, he found it difficult to resist his old habit when he was earning €1,000 a month. He started using heroin and eventually gave up his job.

“It’s very easy to start again, especially in Dublin. There are people around the city selling the drugs all day,” he says.

He got another job, but with shorter hours, and before long he was on the streets. When he went to the dole office, he was told he was entitled to nothing. “She said: ‘You have to be two years here. You have to go home.’ ”

Volunteers on the Simon Community soup run told him about a 24-hour shelter on Harcourt Street, and three months ago he began staying there.

David (30) came here four years ago at the height of the building boom. “I had a good friend here and he told me on the phone that there is plenty of work here and actually good salary, so I decided to come over,” he says.

He arrived on a Thursday and began construction work on the following Monday. He worked for three years, but his last job went from five to two days a week before petering out. He had become addicted to heroin at that stage.

His first employer paid his PRSI for 20 months, but the next employer didn’t, despite telling him that he was doing so.

David needed money, so he took on another job knowing it was in the black economy. He has been told he won’t receive social welfare payments.

“The first reaction when you try to get social welfare is ‘go home, go home’,” he says.

To complicate the situation, he lost all his documents.

“At some stage I have to go home because I can’t exist without documents,” he says. “If I get clean I will think about going home, if not for good, then at least to get things sorted.”

Both men began the methadone treatment programme at the Simon shelter last week and are optimistic about the future.

“I am trying to get clean now,” says Tomas. “I have to find some job, get some money and my own place, and normal life after that.”

Going home is not an option. “If I go back, I have nothing. Here I have a bigger chance to find a job.”