Like the impoverished Irish men who languished in Queens in New York or Kilburn in London in years gone by, the celtic tiger has now spawned a new social ill . . . the growing number of non-Irish homeless.

The number of foreign homeless men gathered in the Trust Ireland shelter in Bride Street, Dublin last Thursday morning greatly outnumbered their Irish counterparts.

For over 30 years, Trust founder Alice Leahy and her colleagues have provided a shelter for homeless men to drop into in the mornings. The men can receive medical attention, get fresh clothes, wash and get food and hot drinks at the centre in Dublin's south inner city.

In a week when a homeless Englishman was crushed to death as he slept in a bin, Leahy pointed out that the influx of homeless men from other countries, especially eastern European countries, is one of the biggest challenges now facing Trust and other such organisations.

Teary-eyed, Przemyslaw, a Polish man in his 30s, explained how he has ended up living on the streets here. Life looked promising for him when he arrived in Ireland. He was earning 500 a week in his welding job and lived with his wife and young baby.

Now he is separated, jobless and beds down with a few of his Polish friends in a derelict house near Bluebell. "We live in a house that is falling down and it is freezing, " he told the Sunday Tribune.

"I come in here every day to get washed and charge my phone so that I can ring up about jobs. I am looking for work but it is harder and harder to get work, especially when you have no address."

One of his friends adds, "I might be able to get a job in Blanchardstown but I have no way of getting there. I have no money to get the bus there."

Since May 2004, people who are not habitually resident or living in Ireland for at least two years do not qualify for social welfare payments here.

As a result, many Polish people, including hundreds of men who came here to earn money and send it back to their wives and children, find themselves homeless when they lose their jobs.

The swelling number of foreign nationals living on the streets and in parks is also causing tension with the existing Irish homeless community on the streets of Dublin.

John, originally from Tallaght and homeless since 1990, explained, "There is a lot of tension between the homeless Poles and the homeless Irish on the streets and the two groups don't really mix. The Irish see the Poles coming into places like this and taking clothes and food that the Irish would have to themselves if they were not here.

"I think that the Polish government should provide resources for their own people over here and it should not be up to us. I personally don't have a problem with them and I mix with some of them and get on well with them but the majority of them stick to themselves."

Alice Leahy acknowledges that there is tension between the different nationalities on Dublin's streets and says this is a new development since she started working with the homeless in the 1970s. "It used to be the Dubs slagging the culchies and the southsiders slagging the northsiders, " she said. "Now the streets have changed and we had 12 nationalities in here in the last week."

Aside from the new challenges Trust faces, Leahy believes society needs to stand up and face homelessness as an issue by addressing the bureaucracy around it. She claimed a new 40-page dossier which homeless people are asked to complete before accessing state services was adding to "their misery and isolation".

Trust Ireland has written to the Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes, complaining about the 'Holistic Needs Assessment' form which was drawn up by the Homeless Agency.

"People need to realise that behind every statistic on homelessness is a complex human being, " said Leahy.

"There is no answer to homelessness. We need to accept that these people exist or else we are going to isolate a lot of people."