Paul Carty is expressive, passionate and expansive, using his hands to elucidate his points. His favourite book is the Robert Graves novel, I Claudius, about the early life of the Roman emperor, Claudius.

"Bit of poisoning going on there, a bit of intrigue, both family and otherwise," he remarks.

It's far from the world of the Irish Brokers Association. But, as chief executive for the past 14 years, Mr Carty has seen defining moments in the development of the association in a period of rapid change during which the issue of consumer rights has evolved greatly.

"I love being in the thick of things, in the heart of the industry, influencing how it is going to go, taking decisions," he says.

He describes the broker's role as a job that has been outsourced by the industry, even before "outsourcing" was in vogue. It reduces companies' product distribution costs, he says. He agrees that brokers are freelancers, "but not freebooters", he adds.

"The other side of the equation is where we act as the agents for our clients. In our business, we only win if we give out a good service," he claims.

He never uses the term "independent broker". "I loath that term . . . Once you see a broker, you know that he is independent. Did you ever see a solicitor calling himself a professional solicitor?" he asks.

This does not stop some brokers availing of lucrative corporate hospitality at the expense of insurance companies. But, says Mr Carty, other professionals receive similar treatment. "The priority is you look after your client. If it happens that in looking after your client you have a deep and strong relationship with an insurer, then so be it. That is commercial life," he says. From Malahide, he was educated through Irish, going to Scoil Caitriona and to Colaiste Mhuire in the city centre and values the early independence that travelling on the bus from the age of six gave him.

"As a consequence I am one of the few people who was up and down Nelson's Pillar any time I had a spare tanner," he says. The experience also introduced him to people from diverse social backgrounds and gave him valued friendships.

He is a member of Gradam, a forum for business people to communicate through Irish. "We meet once a month in the Herbert Park Hotel for breakfast," he says. He studied history and politics in UCD and completed a masters in modern Irish history. His working life began with the touring company, Brendan Tours, which involved a lot of travel to the US, a feature of the job which was not conducive to life in Howth where he is married with three children.

He joined the IBA's predecessor, the National Insurance Brokers Association in 1984, telling his interviewers that his knowledge of insurance was "the square root of nothing" but that they needed somebody to see them from the perspective of "the jaundiced eye of the consumer".

Since then the body has become the IBA, increased its membership from 150 to 600, and moved from its single room over a shoe shop in O'Connell Street to a Georgian building in Merrion Square. "We were appointed as a recognised body under the 1989 Insurance Act," he notes.

But he adds that the IBA's self-regulatory status was not "in isolation". "It tends to be represented like that. We had to answer to the Minister and to the department - self-regulation under clear supervision," he says. He is critical of previous governments which failed to use the full powers available to them under the 1989 Insurance Act which, he says, would have increased consumer protection.

The IBA's code of conduct does not have the force of law, he says, because it has never been prescribed, so if a member is expelled because he is in breach of the code, he can still continue to operate outside of the association.

Mr Carty points to Article 56 of the 1989 Act, which gives the Government the power to prescribe codes of conduct, and to Article 45, which allows the Minister to make indemnity insurance mandatory. "Successive ministers since 1990 have failed to use the powers that they have," he says. On the thorny issue of disclosure of commission, he says it is, in fact, the way most people are paid, drawing salaries with built-in bonuses, while banks' commission fees can be "artificial". Disclosure should only be in the public interest when an investment contract is involved, he says, but he describes commission as the easiest payment to isolate.

"I think we have got to make sure that there is equivalence of disclosure across the channels," he says. For pure insurance products, he claims, it is nobody else's business what a broker makes on commission. He brandishes a Club Milk to illustrate his point, saying the buyer does not know how much the shopkeeper makes when he sells a bar of chocolate.

The insurance industry has been dogged by scandals including the £2.3 million Mark Synnott affair.

The IBA was particularly embarrassed by the disappearance of Mr Tony Taylor, a former president and founding member of the association. More than £2 million of funds invested with him are unaccounted for. Last year, the Insurance Ombudsman dealt with 810 complaints altogether, mostly on motor insurance and life assurance policies.

And this year the industry has been confronted by allegations of churning where customers have lost money at the hands of unscrupulous insurance agents.

Mr Carty says the IBA's job in regulating its members is to try and eliminate "the person who is doing it the wrong way".

The public will often lose money through being sold an inferior product or receiving bad advice. Fraud, he says, is the least common way. "Everything we try to do is to address this," he says, but he recognises that the £50,000 bond system for members is inadequate, even when brokers have bonds.

"Synnott did not have a bond, but it would have been a drop in the ocean. Eighty clients by £15,000, it is a hell of a lot more than £50,000," he says. This year's Investor Compensation Act provides for a central fund, which will pay out a maximum of 20,000 ecus (about £15,500) to people who lose money through investment firms which, he describes, as "a quantum leap", while under the Insurance Intermediaries Bill 1998, all financial intermediaries will have to have indemnity insurance under Central Bank supervision.

But the IBA is considering its options: it can continue in a changed regulatory role, but it would maintain its liability for damages if sued by a member or ex-member. It could also amalgamate with other regulators, such as the Irish Insurance Compliance Bureau and answer to the Central Bank. Or the regulatory function could be handed over entirely to the Central Bank. He believes the IBA should be involved because the regulated should be in the regulatory process.

Another high-profile case concerning the IBA is the defamation action taken against the association by brokers Mr Albert and Mr Dudley Dawson. Damages of £500,000 awarded to the brothers was held to be excessive by the Supreme Court. The case was dismissed last February when it came again before the High Court on the damages issue only, but the two brokers have said they will appeal to the Supreme Court.

Mr Carty says that huge resources are applied in getting the association's procedures correct "because you are constantly aware of your legal liability and you must be mindful of that".