THE equipment in the weights room is to Olympic standard. The young men working in it are silent, concentrating on whatever dream they have come here to follow.
Nearby is another silent room - where boys and girls peer into computer screens as they learn to work with these machines and not just play with them.
There's no silence in the sports hall, though, where two boys' hockey teams are in full clash.
Nor is there silence in the hall and landing where girls are rehearsing a play about a wedding, or in the kitchen where young children are learning to cook.
There are many other rooms - a snooker room and a meeting room for instance - in a building so fresh and gleaming and well equipped that you could be in Foxrock or Monteriotte.
But this is Buckingham Street in the heart of Dublin's north inner city.
Here, the Belvedere Youth Club stands - like one of that area's fortresses - others include a remarkable community and arts centre called the Fire Station - against the ravages of unemployment and drugs.
On the day we visited, the place seemed to be buzzing, yet manager Paul Brady assured us that we had come on a quiet day. The club has 590 members and there are evenings when it contains the combined energy of 120 young people.
They start as young as seven, and it would be entirely feasible to build a childhood around it some do.
Some of the youngest children come straight to the club from school because it provides a stability they do not find elsewhere.
A club for older children starts up later in the afternoon to coincide with the later finishing time of their classes.
On some nights the club is open until 10, providing a secure environment in an area in which it is not at all unusual to find children as young as seven out on the streets at that time.
At the other end of the age scale the club has a remarkable record of achievement. Many of its workers are on FAS community employment schemes but more than 80 per cent get permanent jobs elsewhere after completing a year in the Belvedere Youth Club. Paul Brady explains that people on the scheme are encouraged to get whatever outside training they need to qualify them for careers. The message they get is that they should not leave without a qualification in their pockets - and it works.
The parent body of the club is Belvedere College Union, the past pupils' union of Belvedere College. It means a lot to have a wealthy parent (its president is undertaker and part time broadcaster John Kirwan and its next president will be Tony O'Reilly) and this particular parent put £700,000 into the present building.
Still, apart from the FAS money, the club has to raise £80,000 a year through concerts, dances and collections.
Paul Brady himself is and old Belvedere boy - not of the college but of the club.
He grew up in the area and the club was a bit of a family tradition. His father and grandfather were members.
This club goes back to 1918 and was known for years as the Newsboys' Club.
To get in you had to be a boy and you had to sell newspapers - or, rather, you had to be seen selling newspapers and some of its members at the time sold newspapers for as long as it took a committee member to notice them.
The requirement to be a newsboy was removed. Now it serves and girls aged seven and upwards.
The club committee is anxious to help other past pupils unions or other associations to develop similar clubs and can be contacted at the Belvedere Youth Club, Buckingham Street, Dublin 1. Telephone (01) 855 0282.