Mr Joe Moran's mother always told him: "The only place where success comes before work is in the English dictionary".

This is something he has remembered throughout his business life. "If you put the work and efforts into it, the success will come," he believes.

His father told him he was better off working for himself than anybody else. That is another thing he has always remembered.

His mother was a national teacher who worked until she was 60 years old; his father was a creamery manager who always had other businesses on the side. After retiring, he started a small tile and fireplace manufacturing business in Dublin, Moran's, in which he was soon joined by his son.

Mr Moran, the chief executive of IWP Group and non-executive chairman of IFG and Manor Park Homes, listened well to his parents and today reaps the benefit of their advice.

IWP, the former nail and screw manufacturer, is now an international household goods and personal care products manufacturer; IFG is an international financial services company and Manor Park is one of the leading builders of new starter homes. Together, they employ 4,020 people.

For the tile and fireplace business bought for £6,000, the Morans got £3.5 million in 1978 - "not bad in those days" - and got involved in a builders' providers and Manor Park. In the process, because they wanted the building, they also acquired West's, the jewellers, in Grafton Street in Dublin.

On arrival in Dublin, he says he knew two places, his sister, Mairead's, flat, and Croke Park. "After the last match, I wondered, 'will we ever get back there?' I was in Kerry for the week and everybody has an answer for Pβidi ╙ SΘ; I am glad he's going to give it another go. They gave us a lot of good times in Croke Park."

Mr Moran was approached first in the late 1970s about Irish Wire Products in Limerick, at which time he said "no", he recalls.

"It had been founded in 1935 as a protected industry. Work practices were bad, machinery archaic, but eventually, for better or worse, we decided to go in, in about mid-1980.

"We tried to develop it as a nail and screw business. Dealing with low-value, heavyweight products, exports became difficult and you couldn't run a manufacturing business working on four to five million people on this island.

"In 1987, we decided to relaunch it as an industrial holding company. We stopped making nails and screws in Limerick. At that stage, we had a turnover of about £1 million (€1.27 million) and profit or loss of £25,000. It was a public company and we used the quotation and bought numerous businesses in the fast-moving household consumer goods business."

Among those businesses was Royal Saunders in Holland, Constance Carroll, the cosmetic company, and the Jeyes Group in Britain. "The company was being changed. The idea was we would focus on household products and personal care, taking out and disposing of businesses ranging from cosmetics to labels, printing and packaging, and we proposed to dispose of those in an orderly fashion."

Few jobs were shed because the businesses expanded, he says. Today the business is 50-50 in household products and personal care, and the turnover is around £500 million.

IWP manufactures and distributes across Europe and is particularly strong in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, supplying multiples such as Tesco, Wal-Mart and Sainsburys. It also operates in the US and Canada, with a manufacturing base in the latter, a market yet to be developed. In Poland, IWP has a distribution business, Polbita, and has about 50 franchised Drogeria Natura retail outlets.

IWP is, he says, his first love - he owns 11.6 per cent of the company, whose shares are valued at around €1.80 - and he is miffed that its share price is so low.

"In the last five to six years, we were caught in a mid-capitalisation syndrome. When our institutions started looking abroad, we didn't get the same: we weren't reciprocated from Europeans and Americans looking at us because mid-capitalisations are too small.

"I know we have invested heavily in the management over the last number of years - quite heavily for us - in promotion, advertising and marketing. But I am convinced the results will come through in the next couple of years in our own brands. At the end of the day, value will out. We have gone through the high-tech stocks - a lot of investments have gone wrong.

We are in a sector that is almost recession-proof. We are now producing very efficiently and putting the money into marketing, sales and promotion."

The idea of a trade sale of IWP has been talked about recently, but Mr Moran is not keen.

"I have worked very hard and put a huge amount of effort into it over the last 20 years to develop the business and I think it's probably in the interest of all of us to keep it as a public company. My first wish is to keep it as it is: nothing ruled in, nothing ruled out . . . I would love to see the share price reflecting the value of the company and also for the shareholders who have stayed with us for the last number of years. That is my first love and where I spend 95 per cent of my time."

With beguiling Kerry charm that masks a sharp brain, Mr Moran, who employs P J Mara as a public relations consultant, is his own best publicist. For example, immediately following IWP's annual general meeting in Dublin recently, he hosted a slap-up lunch in the Shelbourne Hotel for around 70 shareholders - he says it's always between 68 and 70 at the a.g.m. - and worked that room like a true professional, a far cry from the curled up sandwiches and tea that follow most annual meetings.

A product of Rockwell College and UCC, he has a degree in dairy science and, like his father, worked for a time as a creamery manager. He says he was sad to leave the dairy industry, but glad he did. "The farmers are good to teach you," he says.

He claims that Manor Park has been one of the most successful new house-builders over the past 15 years. The market is sluggish at the moment, he says, "but a lot is the uncertainty of people saying the price of housing is going to go down. I think second-hand houses could go down, they are over-inflated. Starter homes in particular, there will be a continuing big market for them. The Government hasn't helped with their social and affordable housing. In theory, it's hard to argue with; in practice, it's impractical. The Government would be better off if it left the private builders to handle the private end of the market and the Government provided public housing."

He feels that the stamp duty on investment property and the removal of tax relief has led to the scarcity of rental property and exceedingly high prices.

"The building industry is quite prepared to co-operate but laying down edicts without proper consultation doesn't work."

IFG - "it's probably the best-performing share on the stock market in Ireland in the last 12 months" - was formed in the early 1980s with Richard Hayes, who runs the business.

Apart from his parents' pillars of wisdom, Joe Moran says respect for the people who work for him, basic "country" honesty, and the ability to change and adapt are tenets that have moulded his business thinking. And, yes, the gap.

"Not alone must you find a gap in the market, but you must ensure there is a market in that gap."

He and his wife Marie, who died of cancer five years ago, produced "four Dubs", all graduates. Jean works with ABN Amro, John is marketing director of Manor Park, Cara works with IFG and Adrienne has a master's in philosophy.

None is yet with IWP, and he says he wants them to establish their own worth.

Golf and bridge are his main interests. Both he and Marie played national and international bridge; he is vice-president of the national association and has been involved internationally for 20 years.

His greatest achievement, he says, was developing IWP; his greatest regret that IWP does not manufacture any products in Ireland any more.