The cards were stacked against Ballymun virtually from the moment of its conception. It was envisaged as a satellite dormitory to Dublin, sitting outside the 1950s residential developments to the north and west of the city centre. The lands themselves represented a dead end, a cul-de-sac with nothing beyond but agricultural land and country roads. Into this cul-de-sac planners decided to drop a population of about 17,000, more than all but the largest of Ireland's county towns. In effect, a new town was created without the benefit of a town's infrastructure.

The acute housing shortage experienced in the early 1960s and the then attraction for high-rise social housing developments tempted the city planners into the tower block option and Ballymun was the result. Virtually no provision for employment or community facilities were planned and over the years few were provided. As Ballymun evolved, it also became criss-crossed by high speed access roads that ran past the feet of the tower blocks.

Various attempts were made to introduce development plans that could lead to the regeneration of Ballymun but they came to nothing. Ireland's rising fortunes, coupled with Dublin Corporation's realisation that the tower block experiment had had its day prompted planners to come up with a new solution.

The Northside Partnership put together proposals in an attempt to improve Ballymun. The corporation and the Government agreed to them in principle and in December, 1997, the corporation's representative in the area, Ballymun Regeneration Limited (BRL), was established, with Kieran Murray appointed as managing director.

A "master plan" for Ballymun was introduced in March, 1998, but not before a significant level of consultation with the community.

"One of the incredible things here is the amount of local consultation," says Niall O'Higgins of Lisney, the company appointed as property advisers to the project. "It was effectively to establish what the people here wanted. An awful lot of research went into it. The people of Ballymun have genuine possession of this plan."

BRL is an extension of the corporation, with the sole mission of seeing the plan through to completion. As such, many of its membership, including planners, architects and accountants, were seconded from the corporation. Tendering brought in outside specialists, for example the main architects are the British firm of McCormac Jamieson Prichard.

"The overall project will probably take about 10 years, but for tax incentive reasons, a large part of it will happen very quickly," says Mr O'Higgins. Both the business park and the Main Street are expected to make it into the tax incentive category, which comes to a close in 2002. The 5,000 social and private homes to be built will take a bit longer, he added.