The Star is in the stable yard, darkly shining and beautiful in the raw cold. Papillon is accustomed to attention, easy among the stroking hands and passing pats. It comes with being a Grand National winning horse, and Ted Walsh is happy to stand in the background, content and easy-going about his treasure.

Fettercairn is not somewhere you might normally associate with champion horses. Lying on the periphery of Tallaght, it is not so much a suburb as a random series of dwellings that have sprung up in the shadow of the mountains. It is not the prettiest place in the world and has been visited by the usual inventory of urban problems. But it is a community, has a vibrant pulse and this is why Papillon is here on a darkening afternoon in late December, within earshot of the rumbling traffic on the M50.

The Fettercairn youth horse project is the physical realisation of a community concept that began half a decade ago. The stables are impressive, spacious and clean and well-tended; but they are of symbolic as well as practical use. John Phelan, the energy behind the project, singled out one memory from the years of interminable meetings and phone calls and proposals involved.

"About four years ago, Mr John Magnier of Coolmore Stud paid a visit to the project when we were up to our eyes in mud on a dark and wet October bank holiday weekend. We discussed the project and what our aims were for about 10 minutes. So he then told me what he was prepared to do and I was to go to Minister Noel Davern and explain about the deal that myself and John shook hands on. That deal allowed us to cover the salary of the project manager for the next four years. Two days later, we had a meeting with the Minister and got the green light."

When you listen to Phelan talk about the time scale and the number of dead-end avenues negotiated in getting the Fettercairn project moving, it becomes clear that it could so easily have foundered, that it would have been easier to quit. The idea came in the wake of the Control of Horses Act of 1995, a Government measure designed to curb the escalating problem of straying horses.

Councillor Stanley Laing, of South Dublin County Council, estimated that as recently as 1997, there were some 2,000 roaming horses loose in Dublin county.

"There were a lot of complaints about stray horses, that they were destroying football pitches and roads, ripping up gardens," says Lee Phelan, who has been involved in the Fettercairn project since its inception.

It was clear the Act would hasten great changes for a quintessentially Dublin tradition based on commerce and a genuine love of horses but utterly lacking in regulations. After setting up a youth club in Fettercairn, locals proposed fencing off the land upon which the project now stands in order to demonstrate that they could care and cater for the horses in the community. The project essentially began then, with the informal bordering of land that belonged to the South Dublin County Council and the formal establishment of a club aspiring to educate local youngsters on equine management and care. At that point, the notion of a building, a roof over heads was distant.

"One of the worst times we had was in March of 1995 when a filly named Susan gave birth to a foal that only lived for a single day," remembers Karen Rochford. "People at the club stayed up throughout the night looking after it but it didn't survive. That was hard." At that time, the only asset the group had going for them was a desire to see the thing through. What swung it was the fact that they encountered facilitators who shared their vision.

"I remember one incident here a long time ago," reflects Noel Davern, the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture. "A horse had broken a back leg, and I said to a young fella who was with it, `Sure he's no good to you, he's gone. You can't ride it, you can't breed with it.' And he looked at me hard, and using words which I won't repeat, he said: `Bleep bleep bleep bleep. He's a bleepin' pet.' And I said to myself that that is what this thing was about, that if this lad was prepared to look after and feed this horse just to pet him, well . . ."

Although the issue of straying horses was burning hot at community level at the time, South Dublin County Council gave the land to the project and the Departure of Agriculture provided £500,000. Goodwill, from luminaries in the racing world such as Bob Champion and Ted Walsh, and equine behavioral expert Richard Maxwell, helped engineer other funds. And somehow, the thing got built.

"What was a downright bloody nuisance has now turned into something positive," summed up Noel Davern.

Of the 38 members, four are full-time employees. The aim is to direct local kids towards equine-related careers, as well as provide a facility in which to tend to their horse. Kids used to riding bareback are taught how to saddle up.

Nothing will happen overnight; patience as been the foundation of this project, but the ambitions are grounded enough, real enough, to see fruition.

One of the reasons the Fettercairn project has got so far is that John Phelan discovered that behind all the red tape and cul-desacs, they were all "speaking the same language". People love horses. People wanted this to happen.

"I don't know if anyone heard on the radio other day an interview with Robert Widsen, a young jockey doing well on the national hunt scene. He was asked about where he learnt to ride and said, `black and whites, on the streets of Finglas'," Davern says, hinting at the potential of the Fettercairn youngsters.

So, maybe the idea of a Richard Dunwoody emerging from a forgotten pocket in the city is a little fanciful. But perhaps not impossible, and there are hundreds of paths with a lower profile.

"Whatever about jockeys, there is a huge shortage of staff in the racing world, from stable lads to head lads to travelling head lads, and the same in the stud area," says Walsh.

"If these lads can get their proper grounding here, well, there is plenty of employment for them all, and if they like the oul horse, well, there'll be no stopping them. And they'll have fun. I'm involved with horses my whole life and that's the thing, it's great gas."

It is a funny thing to see Walsh here, a giant in the racing world, a famous face on the television days of royalty and champagne and expensive crowds. Fettercairn is a world away for the big stage but the trainer couldn't look happier. "I always thought it was a good idea," he says. "There's a lot of kids up here mad to ride the horses, and now that there is control over it and they will be shown how to do things properly, some of them will probably get a future out of it."