Huddled in a corner on a cold night that was getting colder, a young man from Bristol was looking for pennies - anything. He didn't call out or extend his hand - he just offered himself up to the mercy of the passing throngs. His pitch was outside one of the busiest shops in one of the most affluent suburbs of Cork.
I saw a 20p coin in his lap. Then someone gave him a number of silver pound coins. He jumped up and exclaimed: "That's wonderful, I'll be able to get a pizza and a newspaper and get in somewhere warm for a pint or two." The food and the warmth didn't need explaining, but the newspaper was a giveaway. He needed it for insulation, not its news value. "I'm sleeping in the graveyard over there - it's going to be a cold one tonight," he said. Before he dashed off for his pizza, he said he was over from Bristol looking for a job.
The encounter made me wonder about the homeless and their lot.
Homelessness, agreed Mr David Nevin, the administrator of the Simon Community in Cork, has a seasonality to it. At Christmastime, when the cold weather bites, people tend to focus more on what it must be like to be on the margins without a roof.
You might think the Simon Community would be in a position to describe the extent of homelessness in a city like Cork. Well, it isn't. Neither can the extent of homelessness in Limerick, Waterford, Dublin, or anywhere else for that matter, be gauged accurately. This is a strange situation. But not that strange, says Mr Nevin, because sufficient funds have never been allocated by the State to enable a professional investigation into the scope of homelessness to be carried out.
What Simon in Cork can say with certainty is that an average of 350 people, mostly males under 40, are helped by the organisation each year. The view of the Simon Community is that homelessness will never be tackled adequately until the research necessary to define and catalogue it has been completed. In several submissions to Government, the Simon Community has argued that assessments of homelessness carried out to date have seriously misrepresented the problem because of a limited definition, a flawed methodology and lack of consultation with voluntary bodies.
Mr Nevin says that three previous assessments, of 1991, 1993 and 1996, each failed to produce accurate or comprehensive figures. He cites the fact that in 1996, as in 1993, almost 50 per cent of local authorities declared themselves to be free of homelessness. He would like to know how this can be reconciled with the existence in some of these areas of county homes and other places providing shelter for homeless people.
He gives the example of Tullamore, where the local authority reported zero homelessness, although a survey by a local group in December 1996 and January of this year found that between 25 and 40 people were sleeping rough.
In Cork, the new Simon hostel at Anderson's Quay, which was built at a cost of more than £2 million, provides dignified, single-room accommodation for those who stay there after they got into difficulty for whatever reason - marital breakdown, unemployment or overcrowding at home. The organisation is non-judgmental. It seeks to deal with the immediate crisis and then steer the homeless in the direction of entitlements they may not even know about. The aim is to get a modest savings plan going so that after a given period, the Simon "guest" will be at least able to pay a deposit on rented accommodation. The Simon Community is pressing the Government to appoint a commission on homelessness. Its purpose - to address the issue in a comprehensive way. It would produce a realistic assessment of the number of homeless people, where and how they are living, and in what conditions. The commission would further examine how homelessness is linked to other poverty indicators, such as unemployment, poor education, bad housing, inadequate health care and community segregation. It would consult the voluntary and statutory organisations in the field and the homeless themselves. Then it would put in place a co-ordinated strategy for the elimination of homelessness by a set date. It can be achieved, Mr Nevin says, but only if the State can muster the will to make it happen.
Mr David Nevin, administrator of Cork Simon, in the shelter's dining-room. Photograph: Mark Kelleher