Frances Maguire gives a hoarse laugh as she waves in the direction of the "refugees" with whom she shares her one-roomed flat - her dogs, Sandy and Bobby, and her two canaries, Eggnog and Harold.
"I call them refugees because they came to me from somewhere else," she says. "But now, I suppose, I'm a bit of a refugee too."
After 47 years, Frances was leaving her home in York Street yesterday. Not because she wanted to, but because Dublin City Council wants her side of the street cleared for redevelopment.
That means no more walks with the dog in St Stephen's Green, just a stone's throw down the street. Her daughter Caroline lives downstairs and her two brothers are nearby, but now the family is being dispersed in different flat complexes.
"We fought them for years, but no one wanted to listen. You can't argue with money, I suppose," she says, as the removers leave with a lorry-load of her belongings.
Across the road are the buildings of the Royal College of Surgeons. "They never did anything for anyone on this street," says Caroline.
Emptied of furniture, Frances's flat looks shabby and ill-equipped, but the ceilings are high and there is a secret garden behind the building. The other houses on the block are boarded up and most of the windows are broken.
"The council have been running down these flats for years," she says. "They wouldn't give us central heating because they had a plan to get us out."
Her new flat near Aungier Street boasts modern appliances and central heating, but Frances isn't interested. "There won't be as much room and it isn't home."
