Peter (18) misses his brothers. While his 16-year-old brother still lives with his parents in Coolock, his two older brothers are dead.
"One died when I was 13. He got rat poison in his heroin. I had another brother who died last year. Got stabbed to death in Ballymun. He was 24 and my other brother was 23. Yeah, I was depressed when they died.
"My other brother though, he's got a job and all, so he has; doing really well."
Crouched on Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge yesterday afternoon, he said he had been living on the streets for four years and had become homeless "over drugs".
Speaking slowly, at times almost incoherently, he said he smoked heroin at first but began injecting when he was 15.
"No, I never shared needles, never. I'm not taking it [heroin] any more because I got on a methadone course. I get my phy [physeptone, a synthetic opiate] at the clinic down in Pearse Street, 50ml every morning.
"I stopped taking the heroin because it was manky stuff I was getting."
He said he wouldn't want to go back to his parents' house because he would "feel left out". And so he sleeps in a doorway at the offices of Dublin Corporation, where it's not too cold.
Though he chooses not to return home, he does drop back every few months for clothes.
He said getting food was no problem. "I just rob that from anywhere. Any money I get I spend on hash."
He said he got his sleeping bag from Focus Ireland and he sometimes went to the charity's coffee shop for a cup of tea.
"They're very good up there. I don't really get depressed. Just because I'm homeless doesn't mean I'm depressed all the time. I'm happy enough, so I am. You can't just sit there like a gom. You have to keep yourself up."
The worst thing about being homeless was "the way the coppers treat you".
"The coppers, they make you get up. Even at five o'clock in the morning, when you're barely asleep, if you're in a doorway or whatever they come over and tell you to move."
