Last Thursday, I met a friend for a drink on Capel Street on the north side of Dublin city centre. Walking down the street at 7.30pm was a chance to experience the kind of genuinely thrumming street life that only exists where pedestrians have space and safety from traffic (the street is pedestrianised). The street has a diversity of businesses, architecture that is human scale and public seating. There were even children kicking a ball, a great sign of a healthy urban habitat.

But as we sat outside a pub on the street we also saw a steady stream of people experiencing the kind of destitution and addiction that are now familiar sights in the city centre. One after the other, people young and old approached, asking for money. There were maybe half a dozen people in total, including a man holding a child’s hand, a little girl who had all the chirpiness of a kid being brought to the amusements, as opposed to a trip around the streets looking for change from strangers.

Most of the interactions were friendly. One was edgy, a young woman fizzing with the kind of energy anyone who spends a lot of time in the city centre will now recognise. Writing in this newspaper in August, the chief executive of Merchants Quay Ireland and former governor of Mountjoy Prison Eddie Mullins detailed the rapid rise of crack cocaine, writing that it “reveals a deeper and more uncomfortable reality exposing the consequences of homelessness,........

© The Irish Times