Two weeks after a woman who was found wandering dazed and confused along Dublin's main shopping street was identified as being Australian student Samantha Azzopardi, questions have been raised over whether a tramp featured by an Irish photographer  is Maltese.

In an interview with an Irish photographer, the homeless man has what sounds like a Maltese accent of the English-speaking variety.

Last weekend, Donal Moloney took a photo of the bearded man lying on the payment in a camouflage sleeping bag surrounded by pigeons.

Mr Moloney told Times of Malta “he felt compelled” to visit the ‘Pigeon Man’ again last Sunday.

“I had been seeing him regularly here... and I felt I had to go and check on him again."

The interview was uploaded on broadsheet.ie and flagged by blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia.

She was alerted to it by an Irish acquaintance who had worked in Malta and was familiar with the accent.

Mr Moloney said there are people in Ireland who speak like Martin but they are usually from “wealthy backgrounds”.

EMBASSY LOOKING INTO CASE

A spokesman for the Maltese embassy in Dublin said officials were looking into the case.

The story is also reminiscent of the case of Tony Borg, a Maltese man who had spent years living as a tramp.

Thanks to the help of The Times, Mr Borg was eventually reunited with his family in 1998 before dying of cancer. The story had made the international headlines after a Maltese nun initially believed the tramp was a brother who had been lost at sea.

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