Dust was universal, the crumbling plasterwork and rotten stairs eagerly awaited victims, this was optimism gone mad. But 15 years on, Ken, David Norris and friends have transformed the death-trap into a pristine example of Georgian grandeur and a widely acclaimed cultural institution.

Next year sees the centre’s biggest test, when several hundred international academics will converge to celebrate the James Joyce Symposium and the centenary of Bloomsday. "It will be an exciting occasion and I am sure we will cope," Ken says. "But equally, there may be days when I wish my uncle had chosen some other profession!"

Ken’s mother, May, was a younger sister of the writer. "I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of James Joyce’s existence and activities. But while my two unmarried aunts Eva and Florrie warned me never to admit that I was a nephew of James Joyce, my mother was always defensive of him. She was proud of his work and she had read Dubliners and A Portrait. She collected anything she saw written about him, which we found in various boxes after she died.

"She also often recalled that her brother had always been kind to the girls in the family, who’d had a pretty tough life. ’Sunny Jim’ the girls called him and, whenever he got paid a few shillings, he would come home with sweets which he used hide behind pictures or books for them to find!

"After leaving Ireland, he corresponded with my mother from time to time. In one of his postcards, he advised her that an American, Gorman, might call in relation to a biography he was writing.’Don’t tell him anything!’ he warned.

"Later, my mother was sought out by all sorts of different people - particularly Richard Ellmann, who wrote regularly from the States and once stayed with us in Victoria Road, Rathgar. She lived to see a change in attitudes to Joyce, though things hadn’t changed very much when she died in 1966.

"Her sister Eva had died earlier, while Florrie lived until 1973. Eva and Florrie shared a flat in Mountjoy Square and had been both very damaged by the material decline of their father, John Joyce, whom they said had drunk his way through two fortunes.

"From a comfortable life in Blackrock, they were reduced to inner-city survival and they were very bitter. Even my mother would sometimes recall the terror the younger children experienced when they heard the key turn in the lock as their father returned after a binge. They were badly scarred by all the insecurities, the visits of landlords and creditors and the lack of money for food. They never forgot being woken up in the middle of the night to be told that the family was moving again.

"The odd thing is that when the Joyce family met Nora Barnacle, they didn’t take too well to her at all. Having come from a comfortable background themselves originally, they apparently looked down on her, though they themselves were by that time living in the same straitened circumstances!"

Family deprivation was one thing, but having it publicised exacerbated the distress. "Eva and Florrie deeply resented James Joyce’s exposure of the family’s problems in Dubliners and A Portrait. They felt he had exposed the family to ridicule. I heard them arguing with my mother about this, saying that people used point them out in the street.

"Florrie worked as a typist in the Law Department of the Hibernian Bank. There was a solicitor there, Walter Murphy, who admired Joyce. Florrie declined to discuss the writer with him. ’I will not talk about that man,’ she insisted.

"Had my two aunts survived, I think they might have mellowed a bit with the changing attitudes to Joyce. At the time of their deaths, they could never have dreamed that their brother would finally be acclaimed in Ireland and internationally. But despite the changing attitudes, I still had a cousin from a very religious background who in the 1990s asked me not to advertise on my walks that he also was a relative of James Joyce’s."

Since the opening of the Joyce centre, Ken Monaghan has taken thousands of people on walks to places of Joycean interest. He takes an understandable pride in being a nephew of the great writer. "But my mother always cautioned: ’Remember you are related by accident and that it was James who did the writing!’ But I am gratified that so many people around the world have come to read him. Ulysses has been translated into over 100 languages.

"What I particularly appreciate in Joyce are those qualities which are so alien to my own character; determination, dedication and his total commitment to art and literature. . . It’s his most praiseworthy and most frightening trait, because it seemed at times that he didn’t care who might get hurt in the process."

Ken Monaghan himself was not lacking in determination when it came to transforming a derelict shell into a cultural institute. With government and EU grants and private donations, the James Joyce Cultural Centre was finally opened in 1996. Though the centre boasts some Joyce artefacts, such as furniture from the Paris apartment where Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake, its main role is to educate the public in the life and work of Joyce.

"It was a hard slog but now we have a library and a reasonably well-stocked research centre. We run educational classes and stage regular readings and performances. We have visitors from all over the world. I think my proudest moment was when I met three students in the library one afternoon, who wanted to glean further information on Finnegans Wake. They had come all the way from Ulan Bator!"

© The Irish Times

The Ulysses@The Digital Hub project is backed by RTÉ and Digital Media Development Limited, the company which is managing the development of the Government's €250 million Digital Hub.

The project has also received the backing of two prominent universities, the State University of New York at Buffalo (US) and the University of Ontario (Canada). These institutions have access to collections of original Joyce works which could be used in a multimedia exhibition.

It is understood Mr Ed Mulhall, head of news at RTÉ, has also met the trustees of the Joyce estate, although it is not clear if they would back the project.

Proponents of the Ulysses project believe the multimedia museum would market itself as a major centre for tourists, but would also provide a range of research and educational material.

Based at the Government's Digital Hub in the Liberties – which is currently being developed at a cost of €250 million to attract digital media companies – the project would use the latest multimedia techniques to show Joyce's works.

The museum would be based at St Patrick's Tower at the Digital Hub, which is scheduled to be renovated by 2004. A feasibility study of the project was recently undertaken, and the Government is waiting for further information from the sponsors of the project.

A Government spokesman said it was aware of the project but discussions were still at an early stage. It is unclear who would fund the project, but it is believed a mix of public funding and private sponsorship would be sought.

© The Irish Times

Modern Library Top 100 Books of the Century:
#1 – James Joyce, Ulysses
#3 – James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
#77 – James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

A&E 1000 Most Important People of the Millennium:
#86 – James Joyce

Writer’s Digest 100 Best Writers of the Century:
James Joyce (Alphabetical.)