In a city bursting with construction projects, the building paraphernalia on the west side of Mountjoy Square should be utterly unremarkable. Its significance comes from the fact that the site represents the final step in the rejuvenation of a once shamefully derelict area of Georgian Dublin.

Eight years ago, when The Irish Times reported on the first office and residential developments to begin in the area, few commentators held out much hope that the longterm rejuvenation of Mountjoy Square would ever actually be viable.

Despite a wide range of tax incentives and the promise of cheap sites, developers just didn't seem interested. Among those working hard to attract quality developers was the then Minister for Labour, Bertie Ahern.

"If there was nothing happening in the city, I could accept nothing happening with the square - but things are booming elsewhere," the man who would be Taoiseach complained at the time.

But things did begin to happen. Slowly the developers, most notably Zoe, moved in on the designated area and began the process of building commercially viable projects while restoring the former Georgian elegance of the square.

Zoe is currently in the process of refurbishing 47 Mountjoy Square, which will contain five spacious apartments boasting original features such as the high ceilings and ornate plasterwork. Ken MacDonald, of Hooke and McDonald, the agency which sold 300 Zoe apartments that were built on the site of some of the worst ruins of Mountjoy Square, described the location at the time thus:

"It just looked like a bombed out site full of dereliction . . . it was attracting the wrong type of activity and wouldn't have been a pleasant place to live or work." Until three years ago, there was a brothel, the Kasbah, operating on the square.

According to Mr MacDonald's colleague, David Cantwell, most builders were wary of building apartments in the area. "The facades had to be rebuilt as Georgian buildings and some of the apartments in the refurbished houses were going to be bigger than normal," he explains.

THE area, along with much of the north inner city, also had a reputation for being unsafe and as such did not present an attractive package to developers.

There was a time, in the late 1700s, and early 1800s, when Mountjoy Square was an eminently desirable address. Past tenants included lords, earls and archbishops, as well as wealthy professionals and business people. It wasn't until the 1930s that the tenement disease evident in many other parts of inner-city Dublin struck the square.

Despite the fast-fading grandeur of buildings that housed dozens of families in often dank conditions, serious dereliction and destruction only set in in the 1960s.

Many of the square's 68 buildings were bought by property speculators who demolished or partly destroyed them in order to make way for new developments. It was around this time that a consortium of conservationists including Professor Kevin B Nowlan and Mariga Guinness persuaded one developer to sell them a selection of derelict sites.

Their good intentions - to restore the buildings to their original state - came, sadly, to nothing and they were either demolished or sold on.

Architect Uinseann MacEoin was behind the restoration of several houses on the east side of the square. He had always been confident that despite the ruinous condition of most of it, the square could be restored.

"Anyone who asked me back then what would become of Mountjoy Square, I told them that before the end of this century it is going to look better than Merrion Square," he says.

Thanks in part to people like Mr MacEoin, Bertie Ahern and developers such as Zoe, and according to many who live and work there, Mountjoy Square is now one of the safest and most desirable parts of the city in which to live. Its past reputation as the finest of Dublin's five Georgian squares - it is the only "square" square we have - can be restored.

OR MAYBE not. "While the appearance has improved, this has been achieved in some cases by interfering seriously with the interiors of the building," says Professor Kevin B Nowlan, former member of the Mountjoy Square conservation group and now vice president of the Irish Georgian Society They may look Georgian on the outside, but inside many are filled with 1990s-style small, onebedroom and two-bedroom apartments.

And while it is a "huge relief" to see the buildings restored, Ian Lumley of Dublin Civic Trust says that in years to come there may be more discussion about the quality of the work done in the square. "What is striking though is that a whole new constituency, with a low proportion of car ownership, has moved in and this will benefit the local area," he says.

While its past has been changeable and often turbulent, time has stood still for some of the more long-term residents of Mountjoy Square. Some resided in rent controlled flats when Uinseann MacEoin bought the houses where they lived in 1967 and amazingly, he has never upped the rent. As a result, these lucky square dwellers still pay the equivalent of the grand sum of 25 shillings a week.