Dermot McLaughlin, head of Temple Bar Properties, plans to smarten up Dublin's often maligned cultural quarter, he tells Shane Hegarty

Dermot McLaughlin should be careful what he wishes for. "I enjoy the odd bit of flak," he says, only half-joking. He is almost six months into his tenure as chief executive of Temple Bar Properties, and if he wants flak, he's come to the right place.

It is associated with culture, but not the one over which Temple Bar Properties was intended to stand guard. "The words Temple Bar," McLaughlin admits readily, "are used as a heuristic device, a short cut for nearly everything that's excessive, distasteful, crude, vulgar, horrible about contemporary Irish society." Even within the arts, the failures have generally attracted more attention than the successes. The collapse of Arthouse was a more explosive story than the steady rise of The Ark. The architectural awards garnered by the west end's "Old City" were met with a riposte from some local traders claiming it was a commercial disaster.

It may be the focus of much curiosity for foreign delegations, but native critics have never been slow to pick over the area's architectural and environmental shortcomings.

McLaughlin, however, worked for 17 years in the Arts Council, a place where a flak jacket should be issued with the contract. "I often joke to people that 17 years is like a life sentence with remission," he laughs. He began as its traditional music arts officer and ended as artform director. His appointment by Temple Bar Properties was interpreted as a commitment to the artistic remit rather than the €65 million-worth of property owned by the non-profit organisation.

A new framework document for the area will be published in October, which he hopes will prove a fresh starting point at a time when Temple Bar Properties (TBP) is moving from the development of the area to managing it. "I don't think the original 1991 reference will fit 2003, but I do think that there were things that were vital and dynamic that I still believe are latent in the area and are still there." It will address the lack of amenities for local residents, and he hopes it will lead to a softening up of the area, to more trees and better lighting.

Look around the area, he says, and it is still "hard to find a spot where you can be at one with the place". Waste management, he insists, is already much improved, thanks to recycling initiatives with local traders, and he would like to see the issue of food waste tackled next. "Although, I'd say other parts of town would be glad if they had the standards we have."

He believes that the original plans for Temple Bar couldn't have predicted subsequent developments. "We'll be taking into account how behaviour and economic and social circumstances are very different now from what they were envisaged backed then. We're looking at how people use the area, the mix of amenities, indoor and outdoors, a whole range of issues from waste management in the public domain to individual behaviour." That includes what he rather demurely calls "various forms of incontinence, whether it's oral or elsewhere". It is a city-wide problem, he insists, but Temple Bar seems to have attracted the media attention. "What we're looking at are ways of creating physical spaces that are less conducive to that kind of behaviour. It's well known that if a space is animated, people doing humdrum things like having a cup of tea or having a chat at a table, it's unlikely you're going to have such evident delinquent behaviour."

He has a habit of shadowing stag and hen parties about the area, to test if publicans have heeded TBP's warnings about the long-term implications of allowing them through the door. He recently watched two groups on the same night refused at every pub they approached. He does not, however, believe that the current cap on alcohol licences - lobbied for by TBP and included in the 1997 Dublin Development Plan - should remain. "Temple Bar Properties has a default position, which is 'No, no, no' to licences. I'm not entirely happy with that as a position, because I don't think it's a sound defensible position. Things change. I don't live in 1997, and I don't intend to."

As a Trinity College student during the early 1980s, he played the fiddle in painter Eamon Coleman's Temple Bar studio, and remembers the ideal the residents had for aimed at. While high rental prices have diluted the bohemian nature of the area, he insists that TBP has protected much of it, pointing to heavily subsidised, high-standard artists' studios and apartments. He believes the successes to have been The Ark and visual arts projects, such as Temple Bar Gallery.

He rejects the criticism of the recent Old City regeneration centred on Cow's Lane. He does not believe it's perfect - saying it's sterile, poorly lit and that it should have been built on the axis of SS Michael and John Church - but insists it does "exactly what it said on the tin".

"We always sold the area as being high-quality, high-density residential. We let out the commercial units on the basis that they had no retail history, so those units would not be let out to anything that relied on passing trade or high volume. They would be particularly suited to destination outlets, or gallery type outlets, and by and large, that's what the majority are. I assume that anybody who went in there can read. They read and signed their lease. It was never imagined as a high footfall area, ever.

"There's been a lot of negative publicity generated by a couple of people over on Cow's Lane, and when I look at that, it says to me, only an idiot would come here to shop because it's a terrible place. It seems to be devaluing the area. It's totally self-defeating."

The final retail unit will be filled within a few weeks, and the area, he maintains, will establish itself with time. "Without being facetious about it, there's only so much of the 'terrible twos' behaviour one can take," he says of the critics.

There has been much criticism of the outcome of Dublin Tourism's short-lived Viking Adventure, a tourism project that failed quickly after millions were spent gutting SS Michael and John, the city's oldest Catholic Church. Sustainable Ireland and rehearsing performance companies currently share the space, but with rumours of either a permanent music or film centre destined for the building, McLaughlin re-opened the tendering process. He and the board felt that more detailed proposals were needed, and early October is the new deadline for submissions.

"I don't want to play it fast, I want to do it right. If it's slow and it annoys people, that's tough, I'm very sorry for their trouble, but it's a very expensive, very complex 20,000 square feet of building, and to get that right is very important." The defunct Arthouse, once in use as a rehearsal and exhibition venue, will also soon find a new occupant. "We had a tendering process for that, and we're now in negotiations with the likely occupier, who I can't name," says McLaughlin. "It's fairly exciting. When it happens you'll know."

He has twice met with local arts groups, and feels that a collective effort is needed in a challenging period for the arts and Temple Bar.

On a broader level, he says that the area needs to be marketed better. "I wouldn't know it was Dublin's cultural quarter unless I knew about it," he says. Walk into Dublin Tourism, and they will give you lots of information on Temple Bar, he adds. Where to sleep, where to eat and drink, but little else. Marketing will be vital.

"What I definitely don't want is a legacy in which Dublin's cultural quarter becomes Dublin's cultural underworld."