'I was told I was David Cameron's problem'

CASE STUDY: MARK SHERIDAN (39), from Co Monaghan, is a well-spoken university graduate. He is neatly dressed and has impeccable manners.

He’s also been homeless in Dublin for the past couple of months. When he went looking for accommodation the other day, he was taken aback by the response of the authorities.

“I was basically told I was David Cameron’s problem,” he says. “They offered me a one-way ticket back to Belfast, where I was previously, and said there was nothing here for me.

“But like lots of homeless people, I can’t go home. Most of us are running away from something. Many are out of prison, others have things to hide. Most of us don’t have the warm bosom of a family to go home to. The system doesn’t understand that. It’s no wonder we have so many homeless people ending up on drink or drugs or sleeping rough,” he says.

Sometimes, he adds, it feels like his life has collapsed beneath him like rotten floorboards. Twenty years ago he graduated with a degree in politics and sociology from University College London. Shortly after that, he got a job in the post office headquarters in London. But his drinking began to get out of control.

By the time he moved to Dublin in 2004, working in the facilities department of a financial consultants’ firm, drinking was taking over his life. He was turning up for work late, sometimes in the same shirt for days, unshaven.

“You know, I don’t blame anyone. I take personal responsibility for my failures. I don’t expect to get bailed out by the State each time. But if you suffer from alcoholism like I do, then you need stability.”

Fighting alcoholism has been like a game of snakes and ladders. In recent years he has managed to get temporary accommodation in Belfast and stopped drinking. But, too often he has slipped back down to rock bottom – which is where he finds himself now.

All he has been offered since he arrived in Dublin in recent months, he says, has been seven nights in emergency accommodation. Since then, he must ring a freephone number every evening to get an emergency bed.

“You ring in the evening, and more often than not the beds are taken. Then you’re told to call back at 10.30pm, so you wander around the streets for a few hours. “And then if you get a bed, it might be miles away. It’s chaotic. No wonder so many people just end up sleeping rough.”

The lack of hygiene and poor standards in emergency shelters means he prefers to sleep on friends’ sofas. “The State is paying a lot for these places, but it’s being wasted by private providers of emergency accommodation,” he says. “Meanwhile, I’m being told the only option I have is to head to Belfast. I was born in the Republic. I’m a citizen here. And yet I’m told I’m a British problem.”