Sarah left Ireland over 20 years ago and worked in tied accommodation in Gloucester. When she lost her job last year, she found herself homeless. She moved to London and slept on a building site for four months after a friend made it clear that she could no longer stay at her home. After several false starts the London Irish Women's Centre was able to find Sarah accommodation and she was at last able to deal with the violent abuse and alcohol dependency she had experienced in Ireland.
Sarah's example is stark, but she is certainly not alone in facing such problems. A report on housing needs and homelessness among the Irish community in London commissioned, and published today, by the national housing campaign group Shelter and the Irish Housing Forum estimates that one in 10 people sleeping rough on the streets of Greater London are Irish. The report, Irish People and Housing, says that almost 25 per cent of day-centre users in London are Irish and one in four Irish advice-centre users are homeless.
The inclusion of the Irish as a separate ethnic group in the census next year will help to attract more funding to assist disadvantaged members of the Irish community. But in the meantime, homelessness is still the most extreme form of housing need.
The latest government figures on the homeless published in February estimated that 420 people were sleeping rough on the streets of 11 central London boroughs. Ineffective monitoring by local authorities and the problems inherent in actually counting the number of homeless make it difficult to assess the true extent of the problem. And as a result the disadvantages faced by Irish people - and single Irish people in particular who are often the most disadvantaged group among the 256,000 Irish in Greater London - are ignored.
As the Celtic Tiger roars in Ireland, workers at the Irish Women's Centre, the Cara Irish Housing Association and other front-line organisations, have noticed that young people from Ireland are still coming to London. They are not arriving in such large numbers as the 1980s but they are often unprepared and in some cases seeking relief from depression and domestic violence.
Fran Clayton, housing and welfare rights adviser at the Irish Women's Centre, says the young women arriving from Ireland which she comes into contact with are often "invisible" to local housing authorities. "The Celtic Tiger has passed them by," she says, "and they are not part of that economy. They may be sleeping on a friend's couch or on the floor, and domestic violence and homelessness can exacerbate mental depression.
"But there is also a lack of recognition among housing authorities to meet their needs. People think that because Ireland has the fastest growing economy in Europe the homeless can be dealt with by other organisations. We still have to argue for recognition - recognition for our own culture."
And as the Shelter report points outs: "Britain has been a place of welcome and opportunity for many Irish-born people, but there is also evidence of inequality, prejudice and discrimination . . . Because the majority of Irish people living in Britain are white, many public bodies and organisations fail to acknowledge the presence of discrimination against Irish people on the grounds of nationality or ethnic origin."
Workers on the front-line point out that homelessness, while not confined to the Irish community in London, particularly affects Irish people who are over-represented in the figures while their needs often go unnoticed and unanswered by the larger government bodies.
The continuing failure of the state service providers and resource holders to recognise and monitor the Irish community in London and throughout Britain has led, according to the director of Cara Irish Housing Association, Mr John Brennan, to the over-representation of the Irish among the homeless. He also says discrimination against the Irish and the second-generation Irish population is widespread in terms of access to services and housing: "It is simply because they are Irish. It is an accident of birth. . . and the situation in Northern Ireland in recent years has translated into a negative effect on Irish people in Britain."
As Mr Brennan looks to the contribution which Irish people in Britain have made to the Irish economy, he poses the question of what more the Irish Government can do to help. Between 1939 and 1945, Irish people in Britain sent back to Ireland about £2.4 million, and many more millions since then. Now, says Mr Brennan, it is not just time for Britain to do more to help the Irish but it is time for Ireland to dig deeper into its pockets to help the disadvantaged members of the Irish community.
The Irish people and housing report can be found on the Shelter website at www.shelter.org.uk and the Shelter advice line is 0808 8004444