“Before the crash, if you went to a landlord and told him you were a tattooist, he would look at you as if you wanted to open a brothel,” says Dolores Murray.
“They wouldn’t want that sort of riff-raff around.”
But things have changed. When she first opened a studio in central Dublin 20 years ago – originally called Celestial Ring, since renamed Wildcat – there were maybe four other body art parlours in the capital.
“There are more than 200 now,” she says.
“And if you look across the country, taking in Belfast and the North, there would be more than a thousand.”
People used to travel to the main cities to “get inked” but now even small towns and villages have tattoo and piercing parlours.
Landlords desperate to rent out empty shops after the bust and the popularity of tattoos and piercings among celebrities such as David Beckham and Angelina Jolie took the industry from the back lanes to the main street.
Last month, body-piercer to the stars Maria Tash launched a “boutique” in Brown Thomas on Dublin’s Grafton Street.
But the explosion in body art is also threatening the industry, according to Murray.
“There are a lot of inexperienced – very inexperienced – people opening tattoo shops,” she says.
“There are people operating out of unsuitable premises, people who know absolutely nothing about the industry, because there are no regulations.
“Some tattoo artists have barely learned how to tattoo and they are opening their own shop. They are not serving apprenticeships, they don’t want to learn their trade.”
Antibiotics
The conspicuously low official figures for complaints and infections are just “the tip of the iceberg”.
“Most people would be too embarrassed to report it, they would just go to their GP for antibiotics, for the less serious infections, or just complain to the studio,” she says.
At the more serious end of the scale “people could die” from the likes of Hepatitis infections, although there have been no recorded cases to date.
Despite setting up the Association of Body Modification Artists in Ireland (ABMAI) to push for better standards, she struggles to attract members.
Murray wants the Government to follow the lead of France, the Netherlands and Denmark by bringing in statutory regulations specifically for the industry.
They could be based on EU-wide guidelines which are imminent, and which, she says, many countries will incorporate into legislation, which will govern hygiene, premises regulation, apprenticeships and the age of consent for clients.
“The age issue, for one, should be set in stone,” she says.
“I know people in Dublin tattooing kids of 14. That shouldn’t be happening. I could name the studios but I won’t.”