There are so many paths Mr Eddie Molloy could have taken in life. He could, like many men from his part of Dublin, have stayed with Guinness for all his working life. He could have become a Franciscan brother or an academic or he could have remained in the Caribbean as a leading management consultant.

Instead the chairman of Focus Ireland has become an industry unto himself. An independent consultant in organisation and management development since 1978, Mr Molloy has had a hand in implementing and devising major structural and organisational changes within the public and private sector.

He was involved from the beginning in piloting the strategic management initiative (SMI) process in the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications. He went on to carry out SMI work in the Departments of the Taoiseach, Justice and the Revenue Commissioners.

This work is about getting Government departments to think in the long term, what's known in the business, Mr Molloy says, as "shooting the crocodiles and draining the swamp".

Although things are moving slowly in the Civil Service, Mr Molloy sees lots of evidence of significant progress.

"The Revenue Commissioners have developed a strong customer service orientation and other departments have had to deal with the pressures of deregulation and privatisation," he said.

The last major domain that will come to terms with the need for productivity and efficiency - managerial disciplines first mastered in manufacturing - will be the Civil Service, according to Mr Molloy.

"There is enormous scope for improvement here as it's a highly labour intensive business and technology will make a huge impact. We have a long way to go to develop a managerial ethos but there is potential for a 50 per cent increase in productivity as long as things are managed in a way that's fair."

Fairness and the importance of quality of life have always been the guiding principles of Mr Molloy's work. His first project as a researcher in the Irish Management Institute was on motivation and morale of female telephone operators at the central telephone exchange in 1970.

He looked at the impact of technology on their morale and he says that what he found then is hugely relevant to the staff attrition problems being experienced in call centres today. "The core of the problem in that working environment is having highly intelligent people working to standard expressions."

Mr Molloy took a circuitous route to his career as a management consultant. He grew up in Dublin near the Phoenix Park and went to school with the Christian Brothers in Glasnevin. He left school at 14 to take up a job in Guinness after doing very well at the entrance exam. There were quite a few people in the area working in Guinness and it was considered a great move at the time because it was "money dead or alive".

After working in the brewery for four years, first as a messenger and later in the laboratory, Mr Molloy returned to school to sit his Leaving Certificate so that he could join the Franciscans. He stayed with the order for six years training and found it a very enriching and rewarding period in his life.

"During that time I got degrees in philosophy and theology in Galway and Rome. The experience has had a huge influence on my life. And then, in much the same way as a relationship ends, I realised it wasn't the life for me."

After leaving the order Mr Molloy spent a number of years at UCD and was in the first group to do a Diploma in Career Guidance. At home in an academic environment, he went on to do a Masters in Cleveland, Ohio in the United States and ultimately a PhD in organisational psychology.

With the IMI, Mr Molloy gradually moved from research into management training and in-company consultancy work.

He did return to Guinness in a very different role in the 1980s. On one of his trips home from Barbados, where he ran a successful management consultancy for four years, Mr Molloy was made an offer by Guinness he couldn't refuse.

Guinness was implementing a future competitive plan at the time and he has worked with the firm ever since. "I was a consultant on a large-scale organisational change over a five-year period involving the installation of new structures, changes in management practice and the elimination of anachronistic class distinctions."

The experience served him well. "I have been very busy since then, purely by word of mouth, and I have never had to market what I do," Mr Molloy said.

Over the years, Mr Molloy has used his expertise to assist voluntary and religious organisations, including the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, the Columban Fathers, Greenpeace and, most recently, Focus Ireland.

"Focus has never been more relevant than it is today because of the rapid growth in the numbers of people left without homes." During his term as chairman, Mr Molloy hopes to strengthen the organisation so that it has the resources to enlarge the scope of its work.

"We are facing huge new needs now, especially with teenagers. At the moment there are 900 families staying in B&Bs in Dublin left to spend the day wandering around town with no money."

One key prejudice about people who find themselves homeless, in Mr Molloy's opinion, is that it's their own fault. He points out that the vast majority of people are homeless for reasons that they cannot help.

Mr Molloy sees a huge amount of goodwill among the business community and among affluent people who recognise the wisdom of the need to contribute to the quality of life. "Generally one thing is missing - a structure or vehicle where they can give expression to that."

Having worked with IDA Ireland on strategic planning, Mr Molloy is confident about the State's ability to retain and attract inward investment. "There is a recognition here that survival depends on being very good rather than very big, and the quality of managers is excellent."

The future lies in sustaining our movement into higher more complex, knowledge-based industry where geographical location is not a disadvantage, according to Mr Molloy and he believes this is already happening.

Mr Molloy has real concerns about the climate in Ireland with regard to race. His Barbadian wife, who is black, has experienced racism in a patronising way and, although his two children don't mention it to him, he says he has to assume that they are targets too.

"Officialdom has failed badly in the way in which it has handled the influx of people of other races and creeds. There is a crying need for clear positive leadership in this regard," Mr Molloy says. He believes it is a measure of the maturity or advancement of a nation how its people relate to difference.

At any one time, Mr Molloy has a wide portfolio of work and he says it can be stressful switching from one to the other. And what does he do to clear his head? "Every weekend I go for a long arduous hike in Wicklow on my own which keeps me fit." A challenging pastime for a driven man.