City manager Joe Gavin won't let himself be distracted by the details of Cork's year as European Capital of Culture. Instead, he is getting on with the transformation of the city, he tells Mary Leland

A truculent observation at a meeting of Where's Me Culture? - a group set up by those feeling marginalised by the programme for Cork's year as European Capital of Culture - insisted there was no need for anyone to apologise for criticising the 2005 organisation: "After all, bitching is part of our culture too."

It is not part of the professional character of city manager Joe Gavin, however. The private company he established to run the year is befogged by rumour but, despite being a diligent member of the board of directors, he maintains an innocent disregard that could be considered lofty if it were not so rooted and confident. The bitching doesn't bother him.

"That's Cork - a city where rumours thrive," he says. "One of its attractions is that it likes to gossip. I'm concentrating on achieving the objectives we have set down. The detail is not my business."

In a way such serenity is understandable, because what Gavin terms the "hard" programme for the year - the return on the €196 million investment in the city's physical transformation - is on schedule and within budget. And that's his primary concern.

But his disclaimers about the problems with the "soft" programme - the withdrawals and disappearances and rows - are less comprehensible, given the monthly meetings and the gossip that usually follows them. He smiles at my own increasing disbelief as he corrects my statistics: the administrative staff is now 24, not the projected 37; the administrative budget is only a quarter to a third of the total, not half; the project managers (now missing the literature and theatre officer, Dessie Baker) are there to help participants who might have taken on proposals that were too big, or to help with "upskilling" the local practitioners.

He does not see the organisation's costs as over-budget at this stage. It's a fluid situation: more money is expected, and there's a long way to go before expenditure exceeds income. Cutting back on specific plans is a matter of "cutting our cloth according to our measure - we can only commit where we're satisfied we have the resources".

He hadn't heard "at all" that a mediator had been sent in to the 2005 organisation to help smooth relationships among senior executives. Yes, he is on the board, but that development is news to him. He won't accept that the internal relationships are (or were) unhappy, and defended that position on radio recently when faced with Cork's widespread belief that John Kennedy, director of Cork 2005, had left.

"No, he was on sick leave, and suddenly the story was that he had resigned," Gavin says. "I've no control over what people say. But what we have there is a board and director and staff all working towards the same end, no different to any other board, and I'm very happy with the way things are moving and the way Cork city is developing."

On that last point his satisfaction is understandable, especially as Gavin sees the infrastructural progress as positive proof of advancement and a boost to morale. But the slippage in the confidence of the cultural community - even if only on the evidence of the Where's Me Culture? alternative grouping - can't be, or shouldn't be, so easily brushed aside. Martin Barrett's programme of special events, for example, is said to have been so downsized as to hardly exist, apart from the opening spectacular of last Saturday.

"Dr Barrett was recruited for John Kennedy's team, that's all I know about that, except that all the arrangements for the opening ceremonies are in place, and the Meitheal Mara, with a thousand rowers on the river, is also going ahead. So I'm not worried about it," Gavin says.

Nor is he worried about the withdrawal of Corcadorca's high-profile director, Pat Kiernan, from the presentation of Ray Scannell's production, Red Sun, for the City Hall opening ceremonies - "I don't know about that, I'm not involved in the detail" - or about the dropping of Mel Mercier's commissioned anthem, Panorama. It's the big picture that matters.

"Two hundred events are going to happen," Gavin says. "The ingredients, the operators, the managers can change; so can the details. These are all matters for the director - they have to be left to him, it won't work otherwise. But the delivery of the programme is what matters."

Delivery is Joe Gavin's mission. Just as he delivered (with the help of a small, inspirational team) the Capital of Culture 2005 designation to Cork, now he is delivering Cork to the designation. It's what he does. There may be people who see some of the buildings now erupting throughout the city as grossly insensitive to what remains of established architectural character, with the deliberate over-reaching of familiar roof-lines and the blocking of views cherished for centuries. But these work in other ways for other people and the sense of injury is collectively outweighed by an atmosphere of change and progress and even dynamism.

It's like a counterpoint to the current cultural tune. Anyone expecting to sense some electrical frisson running under the city's schedule of events for the next year need only look to the building programme, as venue after venue is completed to meet the calendar of deadlines. It's through this route that Joe Gavin has acted as motivator - and in some cases, fixer - of the cultural programme, despite his own protestations of non-involvement.

He has a mental map of the city and its actual and potential building sites: two hotels under construction with two or perhaps three more planned; as many as 350,000 square feet of modern offices available by the end of this month. And although there has been some concern about enormous out-of-town retail concentrations, the plan is to extend the core city retail locations, with a current target of 500,000 additional square feet of shopping space, beginning with "higher order retail", anchored by Habitat on Cornmarket Street.

In Gavin's hands, the city is shifting. Publishers of the Irish Examiner are moving the editorial and administrative departments to Lapp's Quay and the printing works to suburban Mahon. This, along with the removal of the Johnson and Perrott garage from Emmet Place (also to Mahon), allows the major retail focus of St Patrick's Street to expand block by block. It will be further stretched at the junction of the legal and commercial avenue of the South Mall by capturing sites - some of architectural importance - at the southern end of Grand Parade.

"The city is changing in all its elements," says Gavin. "What we're doing would have happened, but the Capital of Culture designation has given a flavour and a focus which would not have been here otherwise. And we have enticed self-improvement as well: places like the GPO are getting facelifts, and the City Council has spent €25 million on the interior of the Courthouse [to be repaid when it is leased back to the court service]. In all, 29 projects - including the museum, an extension to the library, the large research facility at Blackrock Castle, the heritage centre at the Waterworks, the craft centre at Shandon and the creation there of an entire cultural attraction with the Butter Museum and Graffiti - these are all coming to fruition now."

Cork City Council didn't wait for the arrival of Gavin to distinguish itself as one of Ireland's most generous local authorities in support of the arts (it rescued the Opera House several years ago and recently wrote off a €500,000 loan in order to let the management use the money elsewhere), and Gavin is convinced this reputation was crucial to winning the European designation. Now it's showtime. The designation becomes an instrument to enable other objectives, such as the badly needed improvement in localised tourism (of the entire income from tourism in the Cork/Kerry region, the city only gets about 10 per cent).

If, as Gavin believes, Cork's year as European Capital of Culture is "merely a bridge to the future", why aren't more capitalists crossing it? Surely a sizeable donation from the big entrepreneurs might have been expected to enrich the cultural allocation of the 2005 budget, given the degree to which they already own the city? Instead, many of these operators have joined the €1,000-a-head corporate membership scheme, along with the taxi co-ops, pubs and small restaurants.

"It's a question of approaches and responses," Gavin says. "We wanted the citizenry to buy into this in all its aspects. We gave the opportunity to the business sector to do something for the city. It's an open invitation."

Yes, but has it been taken up? Or is it a case that Cork's commercial leaders will profit from the city's civic resurgence rather like guests who dine at the wedding banquet but don't bring a present? Gavin won't be drawn.

"I haven't done any direct fundraising myself, that's the business of 2005 plc," he says. "But in a way the corporate member scheme is misleading in that it does not fairly represent the contribution of some of the major players, people who have the capacity to give an awful lot more, as I believe they will.

"I am reluctant to admit to disappointment because I am hopeful that there will still be a better response, but I agree that there's room for improvement. I don't want to say any more than that."