TradeNamesA steel fabricators in the Liberties has proved its metal by adapting to survive recession, writes Rose Doyle

Steel is king, in terms of its usefulness, variety, strength and, according to Noel Whelan, "we still live in an iron age. You can't build a building without steel. It's in your car, your fridge - even parts of your computer need steel. We can't live without it."

After a lifetime working with steel in its various forms and moods he should know. It began with steel welding when he was a plumber, an expertise which in time became the hard core of his own, and now family, business.

Noel Whelan & Son Ltd are steel fabricators which specialise in spiral stairs and wrought iron. You'll find them in John Street South, in the corner of the oldest part of the city they've inhabited for 34 years now. That may change, soon and regretfully. "Where else," Noel asks, tone reasonable, "would you find 4,500sq ft of space this close to the city centre? I've got so used to being close to everything. So used to the place. I like it."

You know you've come to an iron works when you see the towering, steel silhouette of a horse and farrier with 4lb lump hammer in hand. Inside, there's iron and steel everywhere, sparks flying and concentration high as they're cut and moulded and made biddable. The barn-like work area could be planted in the 19th century and feel at home, but the six strong staff (including Noel Jnr) are definitively 21st century.

"I'm here personally since 1970," Noel says, "but there was a steel workshop here since 1959 and another workshop before that, since 1904 when the place was owned by Matthew Taylor. He made tea chests for Musgraves of Francis Street and the guy who delivered for him to Musgraves stabled his horses here too. There used be pig yards all around this place at that time. I've been told there were more pigs fattened in the city then than in the whole of the country, because of the hotels."

Matthew Taylor lived a long working life too, dying at 92. "His son Thomas (Tommy) owned the yard subsequently with his two sisters and I took out a lease on it in the l970s and then bought it. Tommy worked in Dublin corpo as a dangerous buildings inspector and he's still involved around here. A great man."

Noel Whelan started business "in a small way", coming to it by accident. Born in Phibsboro into a family of 11 children, he went to Canada as a young man, stayed there three-and-a-half years and married Breda, his Irish fiance, in Montreal.

Back home, in the Judo club which fed his competitive passion for that sport, he met Tom Murphy. "He had a small, part-time business here, in John Street, and asked me if I was interested in buying into it. He was making gates and railings and other small stuff. I started in 1971 and bought him out in 1976; he was interested in it only as a part-time venture."

Hard work and long hours got thing's up and going.

"I've been through two recessions," he recalls, "and through it all my wife's been very active in the business, doing all the office work, dealing with the banks, all of that. I've only ever been in a bank about four times in the last 20 years."

Talk of Breda's involvement brings a memory of their mid-1970s visit to the bank seeking a start-up overdraft. "Breda was a director and we'd set things up so as either of our signatures would be valid on cheques. The bank man turned to me, in front of her, and said: 'Is that a wise thing to do?' To this day, when she thinks about it, it annoys her." He reflects, a moment. "I've two daughters. I've always believed in total equality."

When he started up he delivered mail shots to "all the top companies in Dublin. I got a lot of replies, enough to keep going. Early on we used do a lot of work for Abbey Homes and for Sorohan builders. We still do the steel work for Sorohans. We did a big job for them in Clonskeagh plus the gates for their development at Rockford Manor, on Stradbrook Road."

All he knew, in the beginning, was how to weld. "But I did courses in what's now the DIT and took it from there."

The recession in the 1980s brought hard times, "an eight-year period when houses didn't rise at all. People didn't spend, literally didn't go out, a lot of them. Working a 40-hour week would have been a luxury; I worked 60-hour weeks at the time. There were three of us; an apprentice, a welder and me. You just kept staggering from job to job.

"Things were so bad I was thinking of emigrating to the US. Then someone asked if I would make spiral staircases and I looked into it and thought it looked simple enough and started. Over the years we've developed a system for making them. There's a lot involved in making spirals. In the 1960s and 1970s you'd see a lot of cast-iron in houses. Magazine racks, coffee tables, everything. It went out a bit in the 1980s, steel and wood came back in the 1990s and steel on its own is creeping back again now. You get spates of these things."

He's got words on the 21st century use of spirals. "The cheapest way to get extra space in your house is to go into the attic. Generally it only requires wood and steel to extend it. Spirals were fashionable in the 1970s but they're even more so now. You'd be surprised how many people are going into their attics with spirals."

They have a range of designs in John Street but do designer one-offs too. "We'll do anything in steel," Noel says. "We did an interesting job in Newman House about 15 years ago when they were refurbishing there. There was a circular shaft in the building which had once been a granite spiral staircase. All the granite steps were gone so we re-made it in steel and they covered it in wood. It was 40ft high, 8ft in diameter and we had to get the lot in through a 3ft door. We did a job, too, on the Bank of Ireland in College Green, one where the building had to be propped, needled with steel. And we did interesting Gothic-style balcony and gates, as well as old-style fire grate, for the Roundstone home of the author Penny Perrick. It's good to make different things. I like the change."

In the beginning he though he'd call the business The Liberty Forge. "There were three farriers in the area then," he says. "There have been unbelievable changes around here. It used be all engineering and small fabrication places, bigger ones too like Hubbard Bros and Watts of Bridgefoot Street, who were related to James Watt who invented the steam engine. It's all housing now and we probably won't be here much longer either. They'll build flats where we are and we'll move to one of the industrial estates."

He'll never retire. "I'd die if I did," he says. "I love what I do. I really enjoy it. My son, Noel, did an engineering degree but he's here working because he wants to work with his hands. Robert Kennedy is here for 15 years, he started as an apprentice, and so did Ronan Kivlehan, who's here 10 years. You'll never be very rich when you're as small as we are, but you'll never go hungry either. Not as long as you're prepared to work."