Two Fair City characters are facing a tough Christmas as their struggle with homelessness becomes more desperate.
Mother and son Melanie and Alex have been suffering without a fixed abode, and fans of the show will see heart-rending scenes across the festive period.
Actress Nyree Yergainharsian, who plays Melanie, said that portraying their plight is important as it mirrors what is currently happening across the country.
"It's everywhere you turn now, and it feels not far away from possibility, whereas at a certain time years ago it might have felt like you were a good few steps removed from that", she explained.
"Now it feels like one paycheck away from that for a lot of people."
The actress said the storyline highlights how easily a person can become homeless in the current economic climate.
"The strength of it comes from the fact that she's a woman who is working two jobs. She is a single mother; there is no kind of history of homelessness, no substance abuse. There is nothing that we would historically have attributed to how someone becomes homeless," she said.
"I think that is a massive reality of what is happening now. It doesn't have to be somebody who's grown up in poverty in order to get to this point, which is the real crisis actually. Anyone is susceptible now, which is why everything feels so precarious for people."
"I think what's also strong about the story and the character is that she maintains a very clear position for her son," Yergainharsian said of Melanie. "He always got a bed to sleep in, in somebody's house, and she prioritises her kid in a way a woman would as much as possible."
"It's someone who has been working hard and trying her best, and she can't keep up with what is happening and the level of escalation in rents," she added.
The soap star emphasised the importance of telling the story realistically.
"No one here wants to have some sort of idyllic resolution to it," she said. "It's a real problem that's happening now and everyone is really aware of that and we wanted to tell that accurately."
"As you'll see in the episodes that are coming up, there's a real process and a real journey that she has to take. There's a lot that she has to deal with - losing your pride, losing your dignity, when is the point that you have to reach out and how that makes you feel about yourself. All the emotions that come along with it, feeling like a mother that's failed her son. There's so many layers to it.
"It's overwhelming because of how present it is, because we go home and turn on the news and it's there as well."
Seventeen-year-old Dublin actor Adam Karim, who plays Yergainharsian's on-screen son Alex, said that being a part of the storyline has resonated with him.
"A lot of people who are my age don't think of being homeless, but being able to play the role of Alex being homeless brought to life the feeling of what it could be like," he explained.
Fair City airs on Sunday December 23 at 8:30pm, Christmas Day at 9:05pm, St Stephen's Day at 9:00pm (hour-long episode) and Thursday December 27 at 8:00pm.
