Last week's good news for London - the staging of the 2012 Olympic Games - is an opportunity for Irish property developers, writes Jack Fagan

The biggest Irish property developer in the UK, Ballymore, is set to gain significantly from the decision to stage the 2012 Olympics in London.

The company is now the largest landowner in the London docklands, with scope to provide about 15,000 apartments and vast areas of commercial, retail and leisure facilities before the games get under way.

With such a large stake in the east London residential market, it is hardly surprising that it was one of the principal organisers of the official exhibition in London recently showing the style and scale of the planned Olympic facilities in the East End, adjacent to the docklands area.

Company executives will be keeping their fingers crossed that last week's bombing will not have any long-term effect on sales.

While more than €2 billion of Irish money has been going into the UK property market in recent years - most of it into commercial investments - thousands of private investors have been buying houses and apartments in the London area. Many of these are likely to see values rising because of the Olympics.

Ballymore is as well known in London as other housebuilders like Wimpey, Bovis and Barratt. The company was founded in Dublin in 1982 by Seán Mulryan, but with fairly limited opportunities available then in the Irish property market he moved part of his operation to London where he began assembling development sites in what was then a much deprived east London.

Associates say he was attracted to the huge Canary Wharf development which was the ground-breaking investment that opened up the whole area. His first apartment scheme in the docklands, 140 units on Dundee Wharf, was launched in 1995.

The company has come a long way since then and now controls some of the key sites in the docklands, including land opposite the Millennium Dome which will be one of the gateways to the Olympic Village. The site overlooks the river Lea and will accommodate about 3,000 apartments, a hotel and a mixture of retail and leisure facilities.

This autumn Ballymore will begin development work on Europe's tallest residential towers which will be located at Millharbour, just east of Canary Wharf. The two interlinking towers will stand 36 storeys and 50 storeys, reaching a height of 560ft. They will accommodate 790 apartments and retail and leisure facilities with an end value of £400 million sterling (€581 million) when completed in about three years.

On a waterside site only 500m from Canada Square, the two skyscrapers will have a slender glass and steel facade reminiscent of the architecture found in Manhattan, Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.

Not surprisingly, Ballymore has a big Irish following and expects to sell many of the apartments in the towers to Irish-based investors when they go on the market next October. The launch itself is likely to generate considerable interest as the firm is spending £2 million on what will be "the most exciting sales centre in the UK", according to George Kozloeski, head of UK projects for Ballymore. The two-storey glass marketing suite is being built on two pontoons which will be moored alongside the development site.

Though prices have not yet been finally set, the indications are that they will start at around £250,000 for a 350sq ft studio unit, from £400,000 for two-bedroom, 725sq ft homes and £5-£10 million for penthouses, depending on size and configuration.

Those looking for something special at the top end of the market will be able to choose the size and layout on the top 10 floors of both towers.

Ballymore's hard-won reputation for delivering the most stylish of high-rise apartment towers - it uses the best international architects - has just brought it an invitation to join the Canary Wharf development company in building a gigantic 5 million sq ft of offices and apartment scheme just south of the original landmark scheme. The arrangement means that Ballymore will handle the 1,500 apartments and its partner will concentrate on the office element.

Before that gets under way it is moving on to the final phases of the New Providence Wharf, a stunning complex of 1,040 apartments, almost 500,000sq ft of offices and a 180-bedroom hotel which has just been let to Radisson Edwardian hotel group.

It is widely accepted that staging the games will be the catalyst for wider regeneration of deprived areas of east London.

Katie Kopec, a director of estate agents Jones Lang LaSalle, says the Olympics would transform the city into a living postcard.

"There is no bigger marketing event, with around 85 per cent of the world's 6½ billion people tuning in at some point during the games."