When the former church opened its doors as a dance hall in the early 1960s, it quickly became one of the country's best-loved ballrooms. Men and women travelled from every part of the country to attend and the appearance of big names like Brendan Bowyer or Joe Dolan could cause near riots.

Refreshments at these ballrooms came in the form of tea and minerals (as one former attendee remembers, "If you went out and you had the price of the admission fee and two bottles of Coke and you ended up then meeting a girl, you were happy!") but by the mid '70s bars, nightclubs and discos bars had become the preferred haunts. Venues around the country closed and even though the Ierne struggled on into the next decade (ask any thirtysomething about The Tube, the ultimate disco of 1980s Dublin), it became home to the Dublin Fire Brigade Sports and Social Club before eventually closing its doors in 1992.

When it went up for sale in 2002, with a price tag of 2m plus, it could have been turned into offices, apartments or a hotel. But to the delight of those who still hold its memory dear, the Ierne is carrying on where it left off.

Now called Cafferty's @ the Ierne, it's been fully refurbished and now carries a full liquor licence and three bars, a new dancefloor and a sound and lighting systems, and its owners and management hope that once again, it will be packed every night with dancers from all over the country.

James Cafferty, the wellknown music promoter and driving force behind the new Ierne, used to come to dances here himself. He still remembers the night he saw Joe Dolan (who he used to promote) pulled off the stage by his adoring audience. "Fans in those days were absolutely diehard. They would stay in the ballroom until maybe three or four o'clock in the morning ensuring that they would get the autograph of every member in the band, " he remembers. Cafferty's reincarnation of the Ierne will see some of the original performers like Joe, Dickie Rock and Brendan Bowyer make their return to the stage here, and the bill in general will be a mix of country bands like Mick Flavin and Louise Morrissey alongside MOR groups like the Conquerors and Showband Show as well as cabaret. At present, he says, there is nowhere for the 25-year-old plus market to dance and that the new Ierne will fill this gap. "If a person over the age of 30 or 40 goes into a club, there's a good possibility that they will be in the middle of kids aged 17, 18, and 19. We want to cater for that audience, " he says.

"We want people to know that if they come here they will have five hours dancing, good entertainment and good, clean clientele."

That Dublin needs a venue like the Ierne once again is a belief shared by Hugh Hardy, the former manager of Larry Cunningham and the Mighty Avons. The legendary queues snaking out of the Ierne are referenced in the title of his show celebrating the showband years, Dancehall Queues and Hucklebuck Shoes, where the roles of Dickie Rock, Eileen Reid and Sean Dunphy were played by their real life sons and daughters. "When people are coming out of our shows, all of them, the consensus with everyone was 'Oh my God, that music is fantastic, if only there was somewhere to dance to it', " he says.

Singer Dickie Rock's own love story began when he performed here in 1965 and took a break to go back stage and collect a Club Orange from his father. He met a young woman called Judy who was there with a friend, and he was immediately smitten.

"I just had a quick word and then I went back up on stage and I thought, 'My God, I'd like to see her again if I could'. I made notes to someone to see could I meet her during the dance, to get back down and make a date with her. The amazing thing was that I'm not usually that forward, but being in the band and working seven nights a week in summer time, I didn't have the opportunity to meet somebody."

He asked her for a date on and she agreed. That was September, they got engaged at Christmas and they married the following June. "I only knew her nine months but I knew it was right and I still know it was right, " he says.

Does he think that the reopening of the Ierne could mean that good old-fashioned romance is on the agenda once again? "You go to the clubs, the discos . . . I don't go of course . . . but it's a whole different scene. I know it's the scene of today but I don't really think there's much chance for romance at that level, " he says.

"I don't want to fall into the trap of saying, 'Oh those days were great days'. But it was amazing. It was the emergence of pop music, the Beatles had started in '62 and the Rolling Stones were happening and suddenly everything was going all over Ireland and the Ierne was no exception.

"There were thousands of people coming out to dance, and I'm singing lovely romantic songs and they're dancing, holding each other. The one thing I worry about now in the latter years, is how is a guy going to hold a girl in his arms to a nice, beautiful romantic song?"