In spite of its recent economic success, Ireland remains criminally lacking in the sort of high-grade, multipurpose sports facilities that are taken for granted in other European states. Where the average German expects to find the squash-court, soccer hall and sauna under the same roof, unheated changing rooms and cold water in the showers are often the lot of the Irish fitness enthusiast.
However, with the Celtic Tiger continuing to purr reassuringly, a new generation of energetic young entrepreneurs is emerging to meet the growing demand for hands-on sporting centres catering to an increasingly pluralistic sporting community.
One such businesswoman is Vera Quinlan, a 28-year-old oil exploration surveyor who has given up the day job to concentrate on building Dublin's first purpose-built indoor climbing centre, a kind of man-made artificial crag under a roof. The 15-metre high wall is set to debut at Planet Sport, a major sports exhibition taking place in The Point in October, before moving to a permanent home afterwards.
Quinlan is currently looking at a number of potential sites for the wall, including a disused church in Drumcondra and two new leisure centres currently awaiting planning permission on the city's periphery. The overall budget is over £400,000, with over half this to come from outside investors.
There are 45 climbing centres in the UK, but as yet none here. The aim is to replicate the challenge of climbing routes on sheer rock-faces while eliminating most of the danger involved in outdoor climbing. Users follow colour-coded hand and foot holds from the base of the wall to the top. They are tied into a safety rope by means of a harness, and lowered by the rope back to ground level once the climb is completed.
Indoor climbing centres have mushroomed elsewhere as the interest in adventure sports grows. Impervious to outdoor weather conditions, they offer top climbers the opportunity of regular training and the chance to push themselves to the limit in safe surroundings. For the rest of us, they provide a safe way to experience the vertiginous thrill of scaling vertical walls and then abseiling down the rope again.
Not that her previous job history is in any way banal. After studying hydrography and oceanography in Liverpool, she ended up in the oil exploration business. Her work regularly took her to the world's far-flung corners, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, Quinlan used her extended periods of leave to develop skills as a climber, mountaineer, skier and sailor. As a member of expeditions to the Alps and Greenland, spending days cooped up in a tent in temperatures of minus 20C or climbing ice walls for 20 hours were familiar experiences.
"But I always wanted to own my own business and I saw the opportunity here, so it was time to come home." Last August, she enrolled in the entrepreneur development programme of the Dublin Institute of Technology and sank £10,000 of her savings to get the project off the ground.
The number of active climbers in Dublin can be measured in the hundreds, but their numbers are increasing. In Britain, the sport has seen a 40 per cent growth.
As well as a climbing wall, the centre will boast a cafe, clubroom and lecture hall, Quinlan plans. The target is for 30,000 visits in the first year of operation.
