HE sleeps for just five hours a night, spends half of every week in the United States, hasn't had a proper holiday in years and wishes his see how the father could come back to turn a small Irish firm into an international company with an annual turnover of £500 million. But now, Paul Kavanagh faces a more serious challenge. For at the end of this year, at the age of 55, he will retire. He has no idea how he will fill his days.
A decade ago, Paul Kavanagh was known more for his politics than his business interests. True, he was chief executive of Irish Printers,, but he had made his impact as the grey-suited, urbane fundraiser for Fianna Fail. These days, as president of Stream International, he is the toast of the IDA, and the North's IDB. In the past 12. months, he has brought 440 new jobs to Ireland, adding to the 800 already here.
Brought up in Dublin, he went to school in Castleknock College and to university in Manchester. His father owned Irish Printers - the young Kavanagh was being groomed to take over the company - he went to live in Holland and Switzerland to learn the trade. He came back to Ireland aged 24, and started working in sales for the family firm.
After a decade of doing business, Mr Kavanagh claims, coalition finance minister Ritchie Ryan drove him into politics. He and a partner were just about to launch a new venture when Mr Ryan announced a wealth tax. The other man pulled out, and quit the country fast. The project, and the jobs it would have created, were lost.
Then living in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, Mr Kavanagh joined the local cumann of Fianna Fail. Before long be was director of elections for the constituency, where he snatched an extra seat for the party by persuading Paudge Brennan to stand again.
In 1982, Charlie Haughey asked him to take over the task of fundraising for Fianna Fail. He proved the most successful ever to hold the post.
Fianna Fail appointed him to the boards of several state companies, including Telecom Eireann, CTT and the IDA. In 1989, for a brief period, he was a Senator.
The same year, Mr Kavanagh sold Irish Printers to the US printing giant RR Donnelley; it was reported that the move increased his personal fortune by some £4.4 million.
He became head of RR Donnelley's European software operations. In fact, the company didn't have much business in Europe, and his job was to build it from scratch.
"I found myself in a company that had very little international experience that needed direction in setting up a European structure, and I was well-positioned to take on that role. And I could do things - all the things I could never do because the banks wouldn't give me the money. I had a banker back in the States who funded setting up all these operations around Europe. I was able to position Ireland as basically the heart of it, particularly as technology started going forward," he says.
"That was my strategy for the past five years, and it's all come together in the last year or two."
Eighteen months ago, RR Donnelley took over another company, Corporate Software, and created Stream. It is a private company, but 80 per cent of its shares are owned by RR Donnelley. Mr Kavanagh says the move made sense because his software services division was moving further and further away from RR Donnelley's core printing business.
The company now concentrates on software services; buying, managing and installing it for large corporations. Stream is one of the world's largest software licencing and distribution companies, and a huge supplier of corporate telephone support services. Mr Kavanagh's European empire now includes plants in Ireland, England, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, Germany and France, and has a turnover of about £500 million.
My father died about 20 years ago. If had one wish, I'd love my dad to come back and just see everything that's happened."
He is especially proud of how he set up a plant in Derry, with 140 new jobs. in time for President Clinton's visit last November.
John Hume approached him with the idea, and they located a site in the city: "We didn't want anyone to know about it until Clinton came, so he could announce it that week, but we needed to get started. So we sent recruitment people over, and we were hiring people three weeks before Clinton arrived, interviewing, going to their houses, telling their parents that we were a major American company but we couldn't say the name.
"We told them that their kids had got a job, and could they be at the airport on Sunday at six o'clock.
"We flew them to London - some of them didn't even have a fiver in their pockets, we had to go down to the bank in London and give them pocket money - and we sent them all down to Bristol for six week's training."
The trainees didn't know the name of their employer until three weeks later, when Paul Kavanagh told them.
Mr Kavanagh is convinced that Ireland can do well out of the technological revolution: "There is a massive opportunity for this country in electronic commerce - trading on the Internet - if we can get our act together. The two stretches of water between here and the continent are now irrelevant; for probably the first time ever we're competing on an even playing field."
Mr Kavanagh, however, will retire at the end of this year. He has two plans to fill his time; learn to speak French, and do more gardening at his home in Killiney.
And does politics beckon? "When it's in the blood it's very hard to ignore. And if I could be of any use . .
For a second, his eyes are misty. Then he regains reality: "The idea of doing constituency work, I think, would kill me. If it were possible to be in the legislature, then it would be appealing. But you won't survive in politics unless you run your clinics. And that's not me."
