GARY was standing at his pitch in the centre of Dublin, holding a paper cup and begging from passers by, when he was approached and asked if he would tell his story.
"I might as well tell you the truth: I'm a junkie, like most of them that are around," he said. Reasonably well dressed and healthy looking, Gary started begging last year after his marriage had broken down and he left home.
"I decided to try it out and see, how it would go. It went OK."
He has a regular pitch, which he does not want identified. Every day he begs for about six hours, in three two hour "shifts". He gets about £30 per day. With this he pays for his food, his bed (£2.50 for a bed in a hostel dormitory) and his heroin habit.
"Four years ago heroin cost £40 a hit. Last year it was down to £20. You can get it for £11 a hit, £10 if you whinge.
"Two hits a day will hold me, but I usually try and get three."
He says he does not get social welfare because of an unresolved dispute over an allegedly fraudulent claim, and that he is more concerned with getting into a drug treatment centre than with trying to find a new home. He is currently on the waiting list for a treatment centre, he says.
Asked if he found it difficult to stand on the streets begging, he said he was also a bit of a loner, and never cared much what people thought about him. He has no family living in Ireland. "There's been the odd embarrassing moment, meeting people I know, but most of the time it's OK."
More men than women give him money, but women tend to give more when they do contribute. Most people give £1, but some give as little as 2p "which is a bit of an insult". The most he's ever been given was £20.
In the run up to Christmas there was a marked increased in people's generosity, and he was taking up to six hits a day. He's now trying to restrict himself to three.
Gary has one child, whom he rarely sees. During breaks from begging he goes to the ILAC library to read.
Asked about the growing numbers of young adults begging, he said it might have its own attractions "as a sort of counter culture type of thing. It doesn't have that sort of attraction for me - for me it's just a means to an end.
"But I don't think there's anyone begging that doesn't have to do it. No one's doing it for the fun, or because they're making vast amounts of money out of it.
"They're doing it because they have to."
Ann and her daughter Tracy have been begging on the streets of Dublin for the past eight weeks. The day they were approached by The Irish Times they were sitting on a step on a busy street off Dame Street in the rain. It was late afternoon.
Ann looked to be in her mid 30s. Her daughter was nine, she said. The two of them were clean and well dressed.
"I'm on the corporation priority list for housing, but until I have an address I can't get welfare, and until I get welfare I can't get money for a bed and breakfast off the health board," Ann says.
She lived in England for 14 years, but when her husband died a number of months ago, and her family home was repossessed because of debts, she decided to move back to Ireland.
She needs £20 to get through the day, and sometimes it can take until quite late in the evening to collect it, she said.
"I get very depressed. I felt like jumping into the Liffey two nights on the trot. If I hadn't got Tracy I'd be long gone. Begging is the most humiliating thing you ever had to do in your life."
One evening about six weeks ago two celebrities gave her £220 when coming out of the Shelbourne Hotel. "I said, `you're gentlemen', and they, said, `we're not gentlemen, we re just rich'."
Her daughter, she said, thinks being homeless and begging is an adventure. "Hopefully she'll be able to look back on it in years to come, and laugh. I hope so.
A spokeswoman for the Eastern Health Board said women like Ann were entitled to supplementary welfare allowance, and accommodation in a bed and breakfast at the health board's expense, while awaiting housing and the processing of their welfare claim.