Campbell-Sharp was invited by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority to tender for the gallery and was delighted to succeed over six other applicants.

"It's great. We hope to link the important regeneration of Dublin's docklands with our own rural regeneration project in Kerry. Our plan is to make the gallery a cuttingedge space for young emerging artists who come from Cill Rialaig but who would not get a solo show. We will also have group projects with artists who are working maybe on a similar theme, and an information centre for Cill Rialaig for artists coming to Dublin.

"It is a very exciting thing to have that link into the city.

It can be very hard to get across to people in Dublin that something important is happening in a little boreen in a remote part of Kerry."

The project will pay a noncommercial rent for the docklands premises. "It is not free.

What we are getting is a concrete shell and we will have to fit it out as a gallery, " she says.

"We want to look into the inner city of Dublin and identify the talent there, bring them down to Kerry and put them through the unique nurturing process that is Cill Rialaig. Well-known and emerging artists who have stayed in the village will tell you about the changes it has brought to their work and the difference it has made to their careers."

Seven galleries applied for the space, according to Mary McCarthy, arts manager of Dublin Docklands Authority.

The tender was advertised and the authority wrote to several galleries inviting them to apply.

"We were very impressed by the standard, quality and commitment of these tenders and it is heartening that they saw the potential of the growing art market in the city."

The reason the Cill Rialaig project had the edge was because of Noelle CampbellSharp's experience and commitment to showing young artists, McCarthy says. She was offered a non-commercial rate because the authority recognises that arts organisations are not always viable.

"And we will be looking at other projects with a view to making opportunities like these available as part of the strategy of integrating arts and culture into the area in the longer term."

Tenants are already moving into the new apartments in the docklands and the gallery space will be available in early summer.

In remote Ballinskelligs, on Europe's last road before America, Cill Rialaig has become a haven for artists worldwide. The brainchild of Campbell-Sharp, former magazine publisher and owner of the Origin Gallery in Harcourt Street, it was opened 15 years ago and provides accommodation in the refurbished pre-famine village on Bolus Head peninsula. Visiting artists stay free of charge, usually for two weeks.

To date over 1,200 painters and writers, poets and crafts people from all over the world have come to gain inspiration from the surroundings and solitude. They stay in the refurbished cottages designed by architect Alfred Cochrane.

Over the years, artists who have stayed there include Brian Bourke, Gerard Matisse, Barrie Cooke, Elizabeth Cope, William McKeown, Dermot Seymour, Felim Egan, Jane O'Malley, Brian Ballard, Clement McAleer, Brian Maguire, Amanda Coogan, Martin Finnin and Michael Mulcahy.

The writers and painters stay in the refurbished cottages, which were left desolate 50 years ago. Each cottage has either a slate or a thatched roof, its own studio, kitchen and loft sleeping arrangement. The roof of the studio, which is at the end of the building, is glazed, maximising the available light, and the exteriors are clad in local stone.

"We have an unbelievable demand for residencies. Over 30,000 from every continent in the world have applied even though we have no website. They just google Cill Rialaig and find us. What it gives them is an intense short period to establish their work.

There is no charge, no contract . . . arty people can be suspicious of forms . . . so all that commercial stuff goes out of your life for a few weeks, " says Campbell-Sharp. "It makes a great difference in getting the creative juices going. And of course the light is amazing. It's on a cliff edge, next stop New Yo r k ."

Cill Rialaig survives on sales from the gallery, a grant from the Arts Council and continuous fundraising.

"A lot of the artists leave us a work that we can sell when they leave but they are not asked to. We have an exhibition centre, but it is a short season. It's hard fundraising all the time and the Arts Council have just given us a meagre 1,500 extra this year.

We get 41,500 and it is not enough for what we do. It's very disappointing. Other places doing far less get more funding. And now that I am on the Arts Council I can't speak up for my own project.

I think they put me on the council to shut me up, because I was always giving out about them."