Mr Liam Meaney compares the battle for market share in the Irish drinks industry to waging war. He regards himself as a "guerilla fighter", able to hurt his larger and better equipped opponents, by staging the occasional ambush.

The battlefield is the thousands of pubs and off-licences around the State where Mr Meaney has been directing his troops for seven years and says he hopes there will be a major advance soon.

"Nothing is easy in this industry, but we hope when the wave of consolidation comes, we will be one of the ones standing at the end of it all," he says.

Tennents Ireland's competitors are the big three of the Irish drinks industry - Guinness, Murphy-Heineken and Beamish & Crawford. Between them they control more than 90 per cent of the market and Tennents cannot afford to take them on directly, says Mr Meaney. However, he gets great satisfaction from engaging in the odd skirmish.

"This industry can be quite ruthless," Mr Meaney adds. He does not go into details, but says underhand tactics are commonplace and most publicans are acquainted with them.

Because Tennents Ireland is owned by a large British parent, Bass plc, it can afford to at least mix with the big players and remain in business, something which has proven impossible for other brewers.

Marketing is the weapon of choice for most of the big players and Mr Meaney says a lot of money is poured into it every year by Tennents. "We exist in a market which is controlled by one huge player, Guinness, and this is what drives our strategy."

Fighting David and Goliath battles is not easy, but Mr Meaney says he enjoys being billed as the underdog. He says the question of patriotism is not relevant to the market battle. "There is no such thing as an Irish drinks company, we are all owned by foreign parent companies, with the exception of the microbreweries, but they are not competing with the big players," he says.

He adds that the consumer-friendly nature of Tennents products - they are competitively priced and do not have a taste which takes a long time to acquire - is the company's strongest card.

His task is to convince the public to change their habits and adopt either Tennents, Bass, Caffreys or Labbats as their regular tipple.

He admits his message is lost on some members of his immediate family. For example, his brother, well-known actor Colm Meaney, regularly consumes pints of Guinness in front of him. Despite this, he enjoys spending time with him and has visited Los Angeles many times in the last few years to see him.

Although he has yet to bring the star of The Snapper, Star Trek, The Commitments, The Van and Con Air around to his point of view, he believes he is making inroads with the general public, albeit gradually.

"Caffreys has provoked a great reaction and Tennents now controls 10 per cent of the canned lager market, so things are happening," he says.

A childhood spent in Finglas, Dublin, with his two brothers made him streetwise and he is regarded in the industry as a canny operator. The one advantage he has over others is his experience, having worked for many years for several large drinks distributors, including Showerings, Grants and C & C.

During this time he was involved in introducing the first Australian wines to the Republic, a move which can be seen as inspired in light of the success they have subsequently achieved.

"We were fighting against a perception that wines from that part of the world were simply cheap with a poor taste." He says this perception was undermined by a marketing campaign which built up a head of steam over a gradual period.

His approach is still the same. He does not expect any product to be an overnight success, but he adds that "chipping away" at existing brands always proves effective.

"No matter how much money you put into marketing, the customer is not interested unless the product you are trying to sell is good value," he says.

Another factor people need to bear in mind, he says, is that the Irish drink more in pubs than other Europeans. That is why the position of your brand at the bar counter is not the small matter it might seem.

When Mr Meaney goes out drinking himself, he is angered if he sees a Tennents products pushed to the periphery of the bar counter. In this event, his wife, in turn, gets annoyed at him, so he has to try and keep the whole thing in perspective. Leaving his work at the office is difficult when the majority of Irish social activity revolves around pubs.

He hates to think his friends feel obliged to drink a Tennents product because he is in their midst.

Apart from off-licences, he pays most of his attention to getting his products into pubs: both the pubs and the products that go into them are carefully selected.

"There are certain pubs suited to Caffreys and there are certain pubs suited to Labbats, there is no point in just randomly putting the product anywhere," he says. Despite the obstacles, he says he "loves the competition" and finds launching new products particularly exciting.

But living in the shadow of a giant like Guinness has a bearing on everything he does. He describes his main rival as an "Irish Microsoft" and says the Government should not let the company grow any bigger in the market.

He does not believe in personalising the battles within the industry and is on good terms with his opposite numbers in Guinness, Murphy-Heineken and Beamish & Crawford. "I was headhunted by Guinness during the 1980s, so I could have ended up working there myself. The way I look at it is, I have my job to do and they have theirs."

He thinks that dominant players in commercial life can often become lazy and complacent and if this happens in the Republic he will be there to benefit. "The advantage we have in this company is that because we have less resources, we have to be even more creative than the competition," he states.

He is a firm believer in extending pub opening hours and says tourists find it absurd that they cannot get a drink after 11.30 p.m. during the summer months.

His blueprint for the future of the industry is to give the Competition Authority more powers so that fair competition is ensured.

He says if he was starting his career again he might consider working abroad. He has a daughter in Japan and recognises that she has broadened her horizons by making such a move.