Makeshift Homeless Community Thrives Under M50 Overpass

At one of the busiest traffic intersections in the State, where Dublin’s Finglas Road meets the M2 and intersects with the M50, up to a dozen people are living in makeshift camps.

Some have been here for years, having laid gravel paths and lengths of carpet between makeshift shelters, chairs and locked food-storage containers, while others are in dank, filthy underpasses strewn with rubbish, needles and human excrement.

All say they would like something better but seem hopeless about any improvement.

By a patch of ground reached by scrambling up a steep, stony path from three lanes of motorway traffic are four wheelie bins, provided, say those living here, by Dublin City Council.

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Beyond a waist-high fence is a path bordered with small kindling-logs leading into a small clearing, with tarpaulin-topped shelters. Michael, in his 30s, has lived here for two years.

Reticent at first to talk, he explains this is his “space” and “too many people come to use drugs and then f**k off”. They don’t “respect my home”.

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Also living here is a younger man, also called Michael. Aged 27, he has reddish-blonde hair and a dark, circular smoking stain on his front teeth. He is begging from cars at traffic lights in nearby Charlestown.

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Philip (56), from Co Wexford, returned from hospital a few weeks ago to find his tent and belongings “all burned”.

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Most of his clothes were in the tent that was set alight while he was in hospital. “I bought myself a top there in the village earlier on. Talk about value for money,” he says putting on a black and white sweater. “It is proper North Face – just €10. To me that is great ... I only buy what I need because if I have too much it gets robbed.”

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Tents are visible in other tunnels, one of which is occupied by two people who do not wish to talk.

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Cllr Pepper says their plight “breaks his heart”. Some of those living here would be ideal candidates for the stalled Housing First programme, he says, where entrenched rough-sleepers are provided with own-door housing along with wraparound supports to help sustain their tenancy.

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“Vulnerable people deserve so much better than this,” says Cllr Pepper. “They deserve drug addiction treatment, they deserve safe homes. In a country that is awash with money, how can this be allowed to happen?”

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Dublin Simon, which also operates the rough-sleeper outreach service, is “aware of the people rough sleeping at Charlestown”.

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Dublin City Council said the outreach team at Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) was “aware of these locations” and was “meeting with the people rough sleeping and encouraging them to take up accommodation options”.

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The HSE and the Department of Health were also contacted for comment.