One of the more curious aspects of the voluminous coverage given over by the UK press to the sale of the Millennium Dome has been the almost total omission of the role of Treasury Holdings. The fact that a flagship project of Tony Blair's administration has had to be off-loaded at a bargain basement price to a pair of Irish property developers is probably just one more piece of bad publicity the Labour government can do without.

Instead the spin has centred on Robert Bourne, the politically well-connected English property developer who dreamt up the plan by Legacy plc to convert the Dome into a high-tech business park for British industry.

The project may be Bourne's brainchild, but anyone who knows John Ronan and Richard Barrett, the owners of 85 per cent of Legacy and financial backers of the £300 million project, will also know they will be anything but sleeping partners.

The two men, both aged 46, exploded on to the Irish property scene in the early 1990s and have built Treasury Holdings into the largest development company in Ireland. The Dome is just one of a number of projects they have under way, including a £1 billion development at Spencer Dock in Dublin's Docklands that includes a national conference centre, and a wind farm on the Kish Bank in Dublin Bay.

The two men are in many ways the odd couple of Irish business. Ronan is outgoing, described as brash on occasions, with a penchant for large four-wheel-drive vehicles and the colour black. He alternates between a metallic blue Humvee, the air-transportable US army jeep also favoured by gangsta rappers, and a Mercedes four-wheel-drive in his trade-mark colour.

He sports a bushy black beard and slicked-backed shoulder-length hair. When not hunting with the Ward Union Hunt in north Dublin his stocky frame can be seem pounding up and down the leafy avenues of Foxrock on a racing bike.

Ronan lives with his wife, Mary, and three children in the upmarket suburb but also owns the Goulding estate in Enniskerry, which he bought for £600,000 in 1992 from Dr Tony Ryan. He has refurbished the home of the late Sir Basil Goulding, adding a thatched roof to the period house. What is less well known about him is his involvement in charities in Honduras, Somalia and Romania.

Barrett is a more urbane character, whose interests lie more in the arts. Tall and well groomed, he is a bachelor and lives in the city centre, listing swimming and tennis among his pastimes.

Ronan works from a penthouse office atop the Treasury Building in Lower Grand Canal Street while Barrett prefers the less ostentatious surroundings of the Treasury Holdings headquarters in a converted warehouse on nearby Grand Canal Basin.

Ronan's attachment to the Treasury Building is understandable. The conversion of the former Bolands Mill of Easter Rising and Eamon de Valera fame into a dramatic modern office block catapulted him into the big time.

The son of a Tipperary pig farmer turned property developer, who is reputed to have asked General Motors if it was good for the rent on its Dublin offices, Ronan originally trained as a chartered accountant with Price Waterhouse.

He took over his father's property business on his death in 1983, having already tried his hand at a number of small developments in the 1970s, some of them with Barrett, whom he had known from his schooldays in Castleknock College.

Barrett is from a wealthy west of Ireland family which had a grain merchant business and farming interest centred on Ballina, Co Mayo. After school he went on to qualify as a barrister, but the family business was the focus of his attention until he teamed up again with Ronan in 1989.

Barrett was not involved in the Treasury building which Ronan developed on his own with backing from AIB and Paddy McKillen, another Dublin businessman. Built just as the economy was crawling out of the 1980s recession, the building was empty for a nerve-wracking 18 months before the government, in the form of the National Treasury Management Agency, took space in 1990.

The first significant development undertaken by Treasury Holdings, which was formed in 1989, was the conversion of the former UDT Bank building in Fleet Street into the £7 million Temple Bar Hotel. The company went on to develop Bewleys Hotel, also in Fleet Street, with the backing of the Musgrave family, owners of the Cork-based Musgrave supermarket business.

The Bewleys Hotel deal set the pattern for the company's subsequent expansion, which involved bringing in partners with deep pockets to share both the risk and the costs of ambitious projects.

Treasury cemented its pre-eminent position in 1994 by paying £46 million for Irish Life's property portfolio in a deal that Ronan brokered after a chance meeting with an Irish Life executive on an aircraft. Once again partners were brought in, this time Jermyn plc, a London property company. The Irish Life deal was followed by a similar transaction with Bank of Ireland.

Along the way the two men acquired the building in Temple Bar that is home to the Elephant & Castle restaurant where Ronan eats lunch most days.

Treasury moved into the British market in 1996. Its partner this time was General Electric Capital. Together, they bought two property portfolios, one for £70 million and another for £80 million.

The deals brought them into contact with Robert Bourne, the Labour-supporting property developer who put together the Legacy bid for the Dome. Bourne asked the two Irish men to get involved during the summer, and they have been on board ever since. Barrett is a member of the Legacy board along with Maurice Harte, the chief executive of Treasury.

Although they have considerable property interests in Britain, the Dome project takes the Irishmen into uncharted territory. The political and symbolic nature of the Dome means that it cannot be developed on strictly commercial terms.

The fact that Legacy is getting the site, worth £300 million plus, for £125 million indicates that the high-tech business park planned by Bourne is not the most lucrative way to use the land. It is partly a face-saving exercise for Tony Blair's government, and knocking down the Dome is not an option.

Treasury's real interest may lie in the 20 or so acres of the 63-acre site that are not part of the Dome or its related infrastructure. A normal commercial development on this land could turn out to be a goldmine given the low price that Legacy/Treasury are paying for it and the success of the Canary Wharf development across the Thames.

It will take time, patience and a certain amount of guile for Ronan and Barrett to bring this off, assuming it is their real goal, but they appear to have the mettle for the job. They have earned a reputation in Dublin property circles for toughness and also for litigation. At one stage the company had almost 40 separate actions going in the High Court, many against other property developers.

They were also involved in a high-profile spat over the 164 bedroom Westin Hotel they are building in Westmoreland Street in Dublin, which was challenged by Lancefort, the environmental group. The pair have had their run-ins with Dublin's city planners, and seasoned observers say it is no coincidence that this year they have hired Harte, the former head of AIB's investment management arm, and John Bruder, the bank's property investment expert, to front the company.

Sources close to Ronan and Barrett say their combative reputation is overdone and that the changes are to give them time to concentrate on what they do best: making deals.