TradeNamesA north Dublin motorcycle shop is still progressing despite insurance costs putting a brake on sales, writes Rose Doyle

Ernie Barrett has always had a passion for motorbikes. He's 82, still passionate and says he has been from the moment he first rode one. "If you haven't ridden a motorbike it's hard to explain," he concedes, "or to understand. A bit like sex really."

He's known, and between times owned, every motorbike of interest. He still has a special fondness for his M20 ex-army BSA which he once rode for charity from Land's End to John o'Groats. He sold it once, too, to the makers of the film Dancing at Lughnasa with Meryl Streep. He bought it back when they'd finished, couldn't bear to let it go. He has two of them and rides them regularly. "They're still," he says, "the best bike on the road."

Ernie Barrett began making a living out of his passion when he joined his brother, Edward (Ted), in the business of selling motorbikes in 1951. The business is still there, in the venerable and much respected Mountjoy Motorcycles at 18 Berkeley Street, Dublin, 7.

Ernie is still involved too, passionately, with motorbikes in general and the business in particular but his daughter, Louise, and son, Eric, mainly run things these days.

It all began with the ending of the second World War. "Immediately after," Ernie says, "a lot of BSA M20 ex-army bikes came on the market. My brother, Edward, was a teacher but started buying bikes and bringing them over here and overhauling and selling them. I was in the RAF during the war and, when I came home, worked for Aer Lingus and then went to Canada."

But not even the ownership of a Triumph motorbike in Canada could keep him there and away from Rachel Russell, the woman he'd become engaged to before leaving Ireland. "She was to follow me out but her mother wouldn't allow her so I had to come home," he says. Not before a final, passionate trip however: "In my last month there I rode right across the United States, through Michigan, Dakota, Montana."

He and Rachel had been married 50 years when she died.

When Ernie Barrett arrived home, in 1951, his brother Edward (Ted) had given up teaching and was running a motorbike business in Devery's Lane, Phibsboro with his wife and sister. Ernie became part of things: "We moved to Berkeley Street in December 1951. The rest is history."

Louise Barrett has been pivotal in the last 20 years of that history. Larger than life, a woman who shoots from the hip and has the predictable heart of gold, she went the family route and gave her life to motorbikes.

"I'm in the business 20 odd years," she says. "I started in shoe sales, then went into the rag trade but ended up here doing office work before I went into sales. I love the bikes. You have to, to do this. I was riding motorbikes when I was about nine years of age, bikes my father would have been working on at home. There were three of us. My brother, Raymond, was killed in 1976, he was one of the top trial and motor cross riders, Irish champion in his day. He was brilliant, he had the guts. He was killed in a car crash 200 yards from the house."

She's "dabbled" in it all herself, in motor cross, grass track, enduro (cross country) and trials. She rides every chance she gets.

Her brother, Eric, a fully fledged mechanic, has been in the business since Raymond Barrett died. "I'm the general dogsbody around here," Louise laughs. "I do everything from toilet cleaning to bike sales. My father was here until seven years ago when he'd an accident in France. He'd still be here but for that."

She campaigns and laments, constantly, at the way insurance costs are "killing the motorcycle business. It's putting everyone out of business. The use of motorbikes could do so much to alleviate the state of traffic. They're ideal - and they're safer than pushbikes.

"We should be encouraging people to use motorbikes, instead of discouraging them. But this country is not bike-orientated. Motorbikes are not at all as dangerous as people are on roads: I've had three accidents ever and all were the result of other people on the roads. I was twice run into by cars and once by a dog. I could bring you on a bike across town and you'd see for yourself the way they pull out, say they didn't see you. Business is harder than ever, it's due to insurance costs."

Only minutes in the shop and I'm faced with hard evidence for her point. A couple of young male customers arrive, minds made up and full of longing for a bike. The potential owner is 17 and Louise has to break the news to him that he'll need to pay up to €6,000 in insurance before he can ride the bike he wants to buy.

It's the same with the next customer, and the next. Insurance is the first and biggest hurdle for everyone, even older customers.

Louise knows it all, to a cent, and age and bike and breaks the news to them all, one-by-one.

"We had a demo about insurance in town last year," she reminds me, "about 4,000 bikes took part but nothing's changed. It makes sense for a young lad to have something like a 49cc scooter. If he's travelling from, say, Ballymun to Naas to a job, it's the way to do it. That kind of scooter's like a big push-bike really, will do about 35 mph if he's lucky. It costs €2,000 with insurance starting at €1,300 and going up to €3,000. We're turning away three-to-four customers a week because of insurance costs."

Bike people get a bad press, she says. "I don't deny there are nut cases out there but look at the numbers of people killed in cars. Bike people do unbelievable work in supporting and raising money for charities. They do Route 66 every year for Temple Street Hospital."

She's no slouch herself, walking for MS across Spain, India and Africa and, last year, riding a "lovely 75 Africa Twin" through the 32 counties in 24 hours for charity.

They only sell new bikes in Mountjoy Motorcycles, from 49cc up to 2,000cc. They sell all Yamaha models, all Kawasaki. They sell Honda, Suzuki and Peugeot, all makes and models, and they sell Triumph. They also sell the necessities - helmets, mirrors, lap-top bags, cover-up jackets and trousers.

Staff, once on board, tend to stay with Mountjoy Motorcycles too. Tom Dowling and Joe Downs have been there for between 45-50 years apiece, so has Mick Cahill. Liam Doyle has been storeman for some 20 years, Deirdre Garland the company secretary for the same length of time.

"You'd never be able to replace them, the knowledge of stores and spare parts they have," Louise says, "nor Noel Robinson who came to work here in '63. We don't use a computer, they're not successful for stock control in motor bikes, not in the area of expertise we have here."

Ernie Barrett says motorbike people are wonderful, that "only the best people ride motorbikes". But he believes too, with his daughter, that "the future is not so good for motorbikes unless they do something about the insurance. It costs as much to insure as to buy a small bike. In Granada, in Spain last year, I sat and watched 130 bikes passing by in 20 minutes, girls going to work, all beautifully dressed. It's ridiculous that they're not used more here."