May Kavanagh is a fishmonger. And it's no wonder, for so were her mother and father before. Born, "bred and buttered" in Dublin's Moore Street, she rarely sells cockles or mussels these days.

"People around here wouldn't have the means for them, and you'd seldom get the cockles.

"I sell the kinds of things the public wants - herrings, mackerels, whiting," she says. "People love fish. It's very good for you and there are a lot of people on diets, especially with the amount of cholesterol around."

Of the three fishmongers remaining in Moore Street, May has been there the longest, plying her wares for 67 years. As a girl she lived in a house, now demolished, just opposite her pitch, at the Parnell Street end of the market. She helped her mother and inherited the business.

Changes are afoot, however. Dublin Corporation has told May and the other traders that their licences to sell fish will not be renewed at the end of the year. When they applied for a renewal on March 28th, they were given no reason for this abrupt halt to their livelihood.

"It was just out of the blue," says Margaret Buckley, at the stall next to May's. "It was shocking. They gave us no reason, just said they could give us a licence to sell anything else, but not fish. But what would we be doing selling veg? We've been at this too long. It's what we do, and it takes years to build up customers."

Casting her rubber-gloved hand over the ice-strewn trestle bearing eel, cod and prawns, she says they've all just bought new stainless steel stalls - "so we can scrub it down at night" - and points out that they have the gloves, aprons, water and ice required of them.

A spokeswoman for Dublin Corporation said during the week that though the corporation has "tried to encourage them into other lines", the women's licences may now be renewed after all. The women have not heard of this change of heart, however, and Councillor Christy Burke is to meet the assistant city manager, Pat Maguire, on Monday to clarify the situation.

According to a spokeswoman for the corporation's environment and culture department, officials will be meeting during the week to discuss "the whole area of market trading in the context of the redevelopment of the area".

The stall-holders live effectively from year to year, renewing their licences for about £100 annually. They have no protection other than a 230-year tradition. Many fear that Moore Street may go the same way as the old, and once traditional, Daisy, Dandelion, Iveagh and Smithfield markets.

Of the fruit and vegetable sellers, Paul Shannon speaks for many when he asks: "If the corpo are trying to get rid of the fish-sellers, who'll be next? We get very little information about what's happening. There is concern about all these developments, and where we're going to fit in."

The developments in question centre on O'Connell Street and the HARP, the Historical Area Rejuvenation Project, the building of a new hotel in the street and a £100 million revamping of the ILAC Centre.

The O'Connell Street project, which includes a proposal to build a new street linking Moore Street with O'Connell Street, and the Irish Life plans for the ILAC Centre will have the greatest impact on the stall-holders' place of work.

According to the Independent TD Tony Gregory there has been "very little" consultation by most of the developers with the market traders, though he singles out the Carlton group as one of the bodies that has sought to listen to them.

Under consideration are such things as a glazed roof, arts and crafts stalls and, in the new ILAC Centre, a branch of Dunnes Stores opening on to Moore Street.

Paul Clinton, chief executive of the Carlton group, has signed an agreement with An Taisce to ensure that the present market traders will be protected.

The Dublin City Centre Business Association has argued, however, that its members are paying high rates and that the stalls represent unfair competition.

Michael Smith, chairman of An Taisce's Dublin Association, speaks also of suggestions to move them up to Smithfield as part of HARP. He is keen that they stay where they are. "The market is part of the culture and colour of the streetscape," he says.

Writing in 1917, an anonymous chronicler observed: "The life of Dublin streets must . . . seem very odd and foreign and attractive to any Englishman."

Councillor Burke will be taking the Englishman's sentiments to Mr Maguire's office on Monday morning. "As long as there's a breath in my body," he said this week, "there'll be fruit and veg and fish-sellers in Moore Street."