A tramp living on the streets of Dublin may be Maltese.

In an interview with an Irish photographer carried online, 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. The picture caused a stir on the online news portal broadsheet.ie.

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.”

In the ensuing voice interview, the man, who said his name was Martin, sounds distinctly like a Maltese person with a ‘Sliema accent’. 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”.

“He is a very well spoken man – when you see a guy like that on the streets you expect a thick Dublin accent but to an Irish person this man comes from a wealthy background... very articulate, and it gives us all the impression that he’s from an educated background.

“We do have people who speak like that here – but who knows?” said Mr Moloney, adding that no one had so far told him that Martin sounded Maltese.

In his interview Martin never mentions Malta. He said his mother was from Texas, Dallas and he was born there. He mentioned he used to work in a clothes shop in Dublin in the late 1960s; that he studied graphics design and communications and that he knew Mother Theresa as a child “back in the ’50s”.

When asked his age, Martin said: “I should be at least 60.” However, Mr Moloney thinks he does not look that old. “I would imagine that he’s probably somewhere between 45 and 55 years old.”

Mr Moloney said that Martin did not look like someone with an alcohol problem, and if he slurred slightly, it was probably because he had just woken up.

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

In the interview, Martin said he had been in Dublin since February. According to Mr Moloney he seems to stay in the area of Westland Row and sleeps under a railway bridge. “He does not seem to seek shelter in one of the homeless shelters around the city.”

Martin also said that he doesn’t have friends and that he had been married to a homeless woman a long time ago who has since died. Asked what he will be doing at Christmas, he said: “I’ll be standing across there by the church, that will be Christmas.”

Mr Moloney said that Martin did not look like he had health problems or that he was particularly unhappy. In the interview, in fact, he tells him: “I like it here,” that “It’s very exciting when you wake up,” and later “I have achieved most of my wishes.”

‘The Pigeon Man’ photo was part of Mr Moloney’s project to create awareness of homelessness at this time of the year when the weather gets colder. He was in fact concerned that people might torment Martin, because he was featured in the news.

“I don’t want to scare him because I’d like to help him in some way.”

The story is 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.