THE ROUTE to Wembley is well known to Irish visitors to London.

But the pilgrimage to this football pitch-sized destination has nothing to do with the beautiful game.

It's about that other modern obsession - shopping.

Sure enough, as we bomb down the M1 towards Brent Park, the signature, and massive, blue and yellow Wembley Ikea looms into view. It's my first time, I'm nervous, I'm an Ikea virgin. So I ask my Londoner niece and her boyfriend who's driving us there, to explain why this Swedish retailing giant attracts hordes seeking retail therapy, sending them into a flat-pack furniture feeding frenzy.

"I love Ikea because I see things that I never knew I needed - until I saw them, " says the twentysomething niece, admitting that she can happily spend an entire day there and arrive back at her tiny terraced home with the car crammed with self-assembly shelving, a duvet cover, lamp, knick-knacks that cost a couple of quid, plus plans in her head to buy a kitchen next time round. It's for pretty much those same reason that her boyfriend is a reluctant, and rare, visitor to the Ikea.

"I just want to get in, buy the one thing that I want, and get out again. But I can't, because they've designed the place so that you have to walk all the way around it before you even get to the service pick-up area."

T Ikea provokes these contradictory passions wherever it goes. The other north London store, in Edmonton, made the headlines in February 2005, after prompting riots and injuries the night it first opened.

Thousands of people crammed through the doors, hell-bent on grabbing one of the opening-offer leather sofas for £45. The year before, three people were trampled during the opening of Ikea's first store in Saudi Arabia. And though the final go-ahead has not been granted for the first Republic of Ireland outlet, in Ballymun - all 30,000sq metres of it - there is plenty of controversy well before the off.

No-one loves an Ikea bargain like the Irish, despite the fact that there is, as yet, no store here. Irish people taking the boat to Britain these days is a less poignant exercise than in previous decades: Stena Line has a special Ikea travel offer for those shoppers who see the sense in getting together with friends for the trip - or ideally, linking up with the proverbial 'man with a van' to bring back the booty. The Braehead store in Glasgow is considered one of the easiest stores to get to. While there are no exact figures, at least one coach-load of Irish shoppers arrives there daily, while on a Bank Holiday weekend, that number can be anything up to nine coaches.

How long Irish bargain-hunters will continue to have to make the Ikea pilgrimage by boat is debatable. There are currently six objections against Fingal County Council's initial granting of local planning permission in 2006 for the proposed Ballymun site.

But Theresa Daly, Ikea project manager for planning in Ireland, says she is confident it will be a case of 'when' in 2007 the store will open - not 'if '.

"Traffic concerns about the M50 are obviously an important point, but I feel that Ikea has been caught up in a much wider issue with other major projects adding to the concerns.

But I believe it will be such a huge boost as part of the Ballymun Regeneration project, in terms of employment as well as offering Ikea products. In terms of green issues, we are very much leading the way at the moment: Fingal County Council insisted on a 65% reduction of carbon emissions, plus a 40% renewable energy plan for the store. We will comply with that, installing a Euro1.75m geothermal unit that is considerably ahead in conservation terms of anything else being built in Ireland."

Aside from those very worthy eco-friendly concerns, what most people want to know is 'when?' Ikea in Belfast has been given the green light, and Daly says the plan is to be on-site this month with a potential opening date of October 2007 for the first outlet in the North. Ballymun obviously remains a greyer issue - at the time of going to press - but for the Listowel-born project manager, this has been a dream of hers since she first joined the company as finance manager for Eastern Europe 13 years ago. Daly moved to live in Dublin over a year ago to speed up the lengthy planning negotiations here. And yes, she lives the Ikea lifestyle, describing her 1930s home as modest, but with an open-plan living, kitchen, dining area very much in contemporary Scandinavian mode - particularly with a kitchen that is the envy of friends.

"I could have sold my Ikea kitchen 20 times over, friends in Dublin have admired it so much - and are shocked when they heard how little it cost. My philosophy is that of Ikea's - why spend £30,000 on a kitchen when you could have something perfectly functional and stylish for a tenth of that price?

You spend the money saved on other things for the house instead and get on with living your life."

Daly and Helen Blakley, who is working on the Belfast project, bring me on a tour of the Wembley store to show what they describe as 'the unique Ikea experience'. And it's easy to see why a visit is a family day out - it takes a good four hours to traverse the entire building. (An average Ikea store has 10,000 products). Thankfully, there is a restaurant with food all day where shoppers can re-fuel for this most mammoth of shopping marathons. There are designated crèches and play areas throughout all levels, including one section with special restaurant seating where a table is arranged in a vast circle around a ball pool so that parents can keep an eye on offspring not yet bitten by the bargain-shopping bug.

"70% of Ikea shoppers are female, " says Daly. "Part of the objective is to make that day out enjoyable, so everywhere you go, there are mini amusement areas, home entertainment rooms and crèches for small children to play while their parents can relax and shop. We get quite a few dads settling down to watch a DVD with their kids. In the restaurant, there is an emphasis on healthy eating.

Fruit is free for children and there is also free organic baby food."

The layout of each floor is clever: on the first, for example, there are five 'room' sets, all carefully designed to meet lifestyle needs from babyhood to retirement age. These rooms are on the perimeter of a vast central area where the furniture and items are individually displayed, each with a style number that customers jot down on their Ikea shopping pad with their complimentary Ikea pencil (and there's also a free tape measure too). There are six 'houses' on the next floor - and it's here where the cost-conscious ethos of the store is really apparent. A compact 35sq m (376sq ft) studio apartment is fully kitted out in style with kitchen, bed, dining furniture, storage and main elements, all for £1,670. There is also a much bigger loft conversion, 110sq m (1,184sq ft), inspirational in its open plan, black and white modernity. Along the way, big black and white photographs of the mostly Swedish designers beam down at customers from the wall. Peter Jelkby, deputy country manager for the UK - and now also with responsibility for Ireland - explains that designers don't just come up with a chair or sofa fullstop - the products are to do with a person's needs at a certain stage in their life.

"With the room sets, we try to show life situations, and then to furnish them with functional yet good-looking items. We try to get into the heads of people throughout their lives. Our designers are knowledgeable about materials, about what will work on the production line, but contantly looking at practical solutions for the way we live too."

Without a doubt, that mission to combine function, design and value is most realised in the range of Ikea's legendary kitchens. Basic units cost as little as £16, there is a choice of 25 different door styles, and all presses come with butcher's block, solid oak worktops that give a professional look and feel. Prices start at £2,253 and rise to £4,753 for the 'Stat' - and that last price includes all appliances such as cooker, hob, dishwasher and fridge. Daly's own cool, white kitchen - the 'Abstrakt' - is around the £3,000 mark and is one of the most popular sellers.

"The kitchens are modular and can be customised, " she explains, indicating the self-planning design area specially created for customers and which has impressive looking desks for sketching and also what looks like lego-bricks to create a miniscale kitchen. While most shoppers are homeowners, there are office solutions for those setting up small businesses, complete with a planning and design service and small café. Everyone, from interior designers to props buyers is not immune to the homely attractions here, it seems.

"If you look closely, you'll see Ikea products on the sets in EastEnders or Coronation Street, " smiles Daly. Aside from the kitchens are those other products synonymous with company - the myriad of storage solutions.

There has to be somewhere to keep all that growing pile of Ikea stuff, if the philosophy of 'Live your life, love your home' is to be realised. One of the best sellers since the l950s is the 'Billy' bookcase, available in any size, in a range of woods, and with or without glass doors.

Storage is a huge element of the store's philosophy since it was first created in a smaller southern Swedish village in 1943 by founder Ingvar Kampraad.

The then 17-year old went on to create the biggest furniture store chain in the world, naming it after his first two initials and spawning a revolution in flatpack with the central mission of offering good design to everyone at affordable prices.

His cash-and-carry ethos, making customers self-assemble at home, is what has kept prices down and customer numbers up over the past 60 years. According to Daly, Kampraad is very much a man of his people and likes to mingle down on the shop floor with co-workers. "But if he gets a hint of a journalist, he's off." Not that he needs the press.

The Ikea Group has 239 stores in 34 countries and also owns Habitat. The plan is to open 24 new Ikea stores in 2007 - two of which will be in Ireland.

Store opening times are traditionally from 10am on weekday mornings with doors closing at 10pm in the evening - a factor, says Daly that at least may help ease any early morning traffic issues here.

"A pattern in UK stores is that people come in after work, have some dinner here, and then shop."

Food is not something that is identified with the whole Ikea experience, explains Tony Bowsher, manager of the company's UK food service, as we sit in the 650 seater main restaurant.

"The emphasis is on healthy eating, with a good offering of organic produce. We serve breakfast for just £1, and when we open in Ireland, the cost will still be Euro1 - and that's for a full Irish breakfast by the way. Swedish meatballs is one of the most popular dishes - anyone familiar with Ikea will know about them. And you can buy them in the Swedish food market downstairs."

The restaurant planned for Ikea Ballymun will seat over 500 diners - making it the biggest restaurant in the country, says Daly.

A staff of 100 will be required to run the food operation - even though, like the furniture, the emphasis is on self service. 500 staff will be recruited for the store when it opens - referred to as 'co-workers' as opposed to employees. There is an impressive recycling and recovery element to Ikea which will be replicated in Dublin also. 50% of Ikea products are made from sustainable natural wood, or wood fibre. 95% of corrugated paper is recycled at the Wembley store, with other re-usable materials donated to local charities and schools for art and design projects. The store operates a take-back service for low-energy light bulbs (which include mercury) and also used batteries, explains Charlie Brown, environment manager in the UK, who has recycling down to such a fine art that he is saving the company £2m a year in waste disposal.

"The bargain section is always busy, we get everyone from DIY enthusiasts coming in to buy discounted kitchen doors, or young couples looking for tables or wardrobes for next to nothing." And he is not joking - I spied a cream canvas, four-seater sofa only marked with what looked like one little dried mud footprint - and a price tag of just £250. It's easy to see how Ikea seduces people into believing that yet more stuff will make them happy. As my hosts relate the company's continuing global appeal, my attention at regular intervals is drawn, magpie-like, to those things I never knew I wanted. A wreath of twinkling white fairy lights is suspended, chandelier-style, over a dining table. In another location, it's attached to a door.

Anyway I could stuff that into my compact overnight bag? It's just £9.99, and another of the store's big sellers this winter. Every now and then, Daly and her team spot similar new items on display, and for a moment, we are all lost in shopping heaven. Even the most puritanical would fail to be tempted here, despite the lengthy walk, despite the queues at the checkout, despite having to haul the actual product in its plain paper packaging down from the service-area shelves, despite the fact that you can't buy online.

As my niece put it, the appeal goes way beyond the retail therapy of securing that colourful Scandi rug (£10), the classic Agen wicker armchair chair (£19.99), the plain but ultra-modern white and grey dinner service (£20) or the fun, star-shaped ice-cube tray (99p).

"There are days when I'm really bored at work and I'll ring up a friend looking for something to do. We end up saying 'let's spend the day at Ikea'. And even though the store is an hour's drive away for both of us it's just a great day out."