Alan (43) - "Big Al" - has not slept in a bed since 1994. Originally from Crumlin, until five years ago he had a flat on the South Circular Road. Saturday afternoon found him sitting on the pavement of Dublin's Lower Stephen Street, leaning against a shopfront. He was dressed in several layers - sweater and shirts - and a refuse sack beside him held a sleeping bag.
Asked how he became homeless, he says he "had a nervous breakdown".
"I was trying to do too much work, please too many people. I had my own business, cleaning windows - pretty rich people's houses in Rathfarnham, Rathgar, Terenure. I had the keys to their houses and everything. They had to know they could trust me, so I couldn't really take on anyone else to help, and I suppose I was burning the candle at both ends."
Though he attended school until he was 15, it was sporadically. He was sentenced to two spells - between the ages of 11 and 12 and again when he was 14 - at St Joseph's Industrial School in Co Galway.
He chose not to tell his landlord when he was admitted to St Brendan's psychiatric hospital for eight days in 1994 suffering from extreme stress. "They tried to force me to take antidepressants and I just had to escape the place," he says. "I ran out of it. I never told the landlord. I wasn't in a fit state to tell no one.
" I've four brothers and two sisters," he continues. "They're all over Dublin, married."
He says he went back to the flat where his landlord had bundled all his belongings into 11 or 12 black bags. "I just took a few clothes and went, and walked and walked for seven weeks. I didn't tell anyone, didn't want to explain. "I was wrecking my head trying to get my head together, trying not to have black thoughts . . . I remember eating food around Camden Street and Smithfield where I'd find old bits of fruit and vegetables at the markets. I didn't go to hostels. I never go to places like that because I just like to keep myself to myself."
So, most nights he keeps to himself, sleeping by the gates of the George's Street market. He can get some sleep there, he says.
"It's fairly sheltered. I get up at 8 o'clock in the morning when they open the gates and pack my bags up. I throw away the cardboard - make a fresh bed every night."
He says he then collects a "few bob" and maybe goes down to Centra, "where they have a hot counter, make a bit of dinner for myself.
"It all depends on how much you can get, and people give you cups of tea."
One man gives him a bag of Thornton's toffee while we talk. A young woman greets him warmly, asks him if he'd like a cup of tea.
"I'm quite friendly, I think, very approachable. People are good to me."
He says he gets colds and flu, but he just lets them pass. He doesn't want to approach doctors, hospitals or social workers.
"Maybe I do it the hard way."
The isolation, he says, is the worst aspect of homelessness. "Loneliness is a terrible thing," he says. "Loneliness - it's like being on the verge of suicide all the time."
