The housing crisis persists, and homelessness is up in Galway and nationally. Tens of thousands of uncounted, hidden homeless - couch surfers and over-occupied households - remain precipitously close to sleeping rough. As autumn winds strip leaves from trees, the tented shanty towns at the edges of the city’s parks and wastelands hove into view. To gain an insight, the Galway Advertiser slept rough last week, tagging along with the Simon Community’s industrious fundraisers, service users, SimonSoc university group and a chilly mayor of Galway sleeping outside for her very first time.
It’s raining. I’m hungry. I’ve lost my keys. Where are my warm socks? It’s getting cold.
I hope this madness is cancelled. I don’t want to sleep on the streets tonight. Maybe some other time? I know it’s for charity, but would it be okay if I stayed home…?
But it isn’t cancelled. Because a homeless person can’t decide to just ‘stay home’ and not sleep rough, despite torrential rain last Friday afternoon. That’s when reality lands – if the Galway Advertiser really was homeless, this would just be another exhausting day with no certainty where or how it will end, or – perhaps, for some – if it will end.
Laying out a mat and blanket on the unforgivingly hard street without privacy – in public, in full view of the well-dressed punters heading out for dinner, really focuses the mind. Preparing one’s bed is something normally done with curtains drawn; doors closed.
The Advertiser makes a nest while backed to a dirty wall, next to a shuttered shop. In hindsight, this is a primal response to an unknown threat. It must feel worse for the elderly, infirm or vulnerable. It doesn’t bear thinking about how this sensation affects a child. It will reach 9°C tonight. The harshest winter might be -10°C.
Sleeping out on the cobbles of central Galway for one night only is an unforgettable, emotional and potentially dangerous experience, but it is the anticipation beforehand, and reflections after, that linger. Most of the evening itself was spent fundraising.
Rattling buckets
Last Friday, the Simon Community invited the Galway Advertiser to join an intrepid bunch of community leaders, bucket shakers and students to sleep out on William Street. Separately, students of the Bish and ATU held sleepouts elsewhere in the city centre and Kilimer.
We faced cold, insecurity, hunger, lack of toilets or any privacy, but ultimately all had homes to return to the following day. Real rough sleepers must begin the ordeal of transience and uncertainty again each morning, the moment they wake.
Most volunteers lasted the whole night, until council staff arrived before 6am to begin their marvellous (but loud ) daily clean-up. Most notably, mayor of the city of Galway, Councillor Helen Ogbu, wrapped in blankets like a babushka doll, stayed out all night, despite never sleeping under the stars before.
“I spent a day without seeing, with the visually impaired, to better understand disability, which informed my policy on the council hiring dedicated disability officers. I want to sleep out to better understand homelessness,” she said.
Any visitors to the city centre last Friday may have spotted hordes of volunteers sporting yellow beanie hats, clasping collection buckets and card readers, patrolling the city centre. Around €60,000 was raised, with at least another €10,000 promised from other sleep outs around counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon.
Some pubs deny entry to fundraisers shaking buckets. Some say it is for insurance purposes, but there is an unsaid – and understandable – drive to protect patrons inside from incessant interruption from well-meaning chuggers.
Patrolling Shop Street all night, the Advertiser had no qualms prodding people in public to cough up coins, or tap Simon’s portable card machines. This reporter’s eye spotted some well-known personalities out on a Friday night. They were mercilessly blackmailed into contributing, lest they see their names in print next week for refusing. Who claims the Press is powerless?
Weapon of mass collection
But then there is Simon’s secret weapon; a bucket shaker no bouncer can refuse: the indefatigable Betty O’Flaherty, who declines to divulge her age except “that it’s over 29”. An elegant lady of venerable years, she emerges in high-viz from each premises with a plastic bucket split under its weight in coins. She began at 6pm, and strolls home at midnight. She has been at this for 18 years. Most door staff know her by name. Hers is the heaviest haul of the night.
At 9pm, 15 pizzas are donated by Dough Bros to support the 35 fundraisers sleeping rough tonight. With cold setting in, they are devoured.
A young kitchen porter mistakes the Advertiser for a real homeless person, and offers to nip back to work to collect leftovers. Much later, a young Indian chap carries several large bottles of fresh water down from the 24-hour Gala shop off Eyre Square. There is a late-night camaraderie in the city centre, overseen by ever patrolling gardaí, who report last Friday was a quiet one, with just five arrests by 5am.
The temporary Simon Community camp outside Matt O’Flaherty chemists is watched over by Antonio and Tom, two unobtrusive security guards hired for the fundraising event. Over the course of eight hours, they intercept several individuals showing too keen an interest in sleeping volunteers.
Passing gardaí intervene to move on an aggressive, shouting drunk who is upset that one of these security men is not a white, Irish man. The loudmouth declines to volunteer for next year’s sleep-out.
A trio of tracksuited messers eye-up collection buckets after asking for selfies with the mayor. One contributor to Simon’s static bucket collection on William Street offers “a bump” of cocaine as he has no change.
Another young lad tries to pay €500 on the card machine because he got his student loan approved yesterday, “and it’s a good cause,” he slurs. He is gently dissuaded. A lost English girl in a ballgown claims “she’ll never forget us” for giving directions. A cowgirl-themed hen party from Belfast is peeved because busy bars won’t admit their bride dressed as an inflatable heifer.
Anecdotally all amusing, but there is a dark side.
Urban threats
There is no quiet, sleeping rough on the city streets, and little darkness either, with bright lights shining into every dark corner that isn’t drenched in urine.
Just as drunken punters begin to peter out, the seagulls, fat on spilled chips, waddle along. To tired ears, their incessant squawking is reminiscent of a Fanta-filled toddler mimicking a car alarm.
The street cleaners will be here soon. Followed by delivery trucks.
Sounds on the streets are harsher, louder, crueller when you’re lying on them. The diesel rumble of a bin lorry thrums menacingly, mechanically.
The yells of a boisterous gang of young lads drifts up the street after 4am. Probably nothing. Nestled within a group of sleeping bodies, like a colony of sleeping-bagged street seals, it’s not too worrying, but alone, it would make you lie with one eye open.
A lone girl in all-black blouse, skirt and shoes carrying a white bag stomps past at an ungodly hour. Her eyes look like they have cried tonight.
Simon service users reckons the council’s street cleaning crews are out early “because they know the mayor is sleeping out tonight”.
It’s a signal to pack up and go home after a sleepless night. Grateful to have one to go to, as literally thousands have not. https://www.idonate.ie/event/sleepoutforsimon2026
