Just when he thought he was out, Fergal McGrath got pulled back in.

Having served nearly five years as managing director of Druid Theatre Company (where Declan Gibbons, former general manager of Macnas and latterly with Ticketmaster, was just this week appointed MD), and 10 years with Galway Arts Festival, McGrath was set for a career change, bound for Magma Films as managing director. Then, early last month, it emerged that McGrath was to become the new manager of the Town Hall Theatre in Galway. What happened? "I'm not an opportunist," says McGrath, "but I'm not one to let an opportunity pass me by either."

If Rory Concannon's gravitation from arts to business suggests that talented arts managers might be lured away by commercial rewards, McGrath's distinguished career has had the opposite trajectory. "Mike Diskin [ who McGrath succeeds at the Town Hall Theatre] has often said to me, once business people come into the arts, they tend to stay in the arts." McGrath, who began his career as a manager with Fyffes plc, is a good example. "When I was in Fyffes, I worked in the pot-plant and cut-flower business, working closely with growers and suppliers who were creating the product. Equally, I was working closely with the multiples who were selling that product. A lot of arts managers are in the same position, where they're working with the artists who are creating the 'product' and then trying to attract the audiences for that product."

McGrath cites the words and example of Jerome Hynes, who died in 2005, and who was one of the foremost arts managers in Ireland, with Druid and Wexford Festival Opera: "The arts are not a business," said Hynes, "but they should be managed as a business." McGrath contends that the arts manager must balance respect for the product and empathy for its creators with the aggressive and assertive stance of any business.

Arts managers and business people are not interchangeable, however, as commercial strategies are not always appropriate for a not-for-profit sector. "I've never met an artistic director who believed that artistic expression could ever be limited by audience preference," McGrath wrote in a recent paper on marketing. In the arts, the bottom line doesn't dictate.

As for the health of arts management, and whether its crop is steadily being replenished (to borrow a cut-flower analogy), McGrath can point to those who emerged in the 1970s, such as Garry Hynes, Ollie Jennings and Michael Colgan; those who emerged in the 1980s, such as Fiach MacConghail; and more recent additions, such as Donal Shiels, Loughlin Deegan and Fergus Linehan. But he wonders where the next generation is, having perhaps entered other industries.

"It has been said to me that there are limited opportunities for senior managers," he concedes. "There are probably less than a dozen senior arts positions in the country. And the career opportunities are somewhat restricted by the modest salary levels available . . . There is no doubt: one doesn't go into the arts to earn a lucrative living."