"What a lot of people don't know about the stock exchange is that it's a business. The business is regulation but they approach it in a businesslike way. Dolmen is the same. The business is different but the principles are the same."

So says Ms Gerardine Jones, chief operating officer of Dolmen Butler Briscoe and, until recently, director of listing at the Irish Stock Exchange. "I suppose you have opportunities for being a little bit more diverse. As a regulator, you are constrained in what you do. We feel the world is our oyster in Dolmen."

Ms Jones is the first woman to head a stockbroking firm in Ireland and the first person to fill the chief operating officer role in her company. "It's a radical change. In a way, it's much more pro-active than reactive. It's an opportunity to be more creative and dynamic and take the business in a direction you feel most appropriate.

"In my role as chief operating officer, I have all divisions - stockbroking, fund management, corporate finance and online broking - reporting to me. My role is to ensure the business is run as it should be and that it moves forward in the right and most productive way.

"We have 130 people working here; it has grown quite rapidly. Butler Briscoe has been in business for 86 years. The Dolmen part is two years old and it is in that period that the greatest growth has come.

"We're very focused on clients and wealth creation for clients. We're offering a completely diverse package to meet the needs of wealth creation and wealth management. The company is also looking for opportunities and quite rigorous and quite forward looking."

The company came to a point, she said, where there was a need for a chief operating officer: the business was developing to a critical mass where it needed somebody to run the business while it was developing.

Ms Jones' working day begins at 8 a.m. and finishes between 6.30 p.m. and 7 p.m. "I live in Rathgar, so I am only 25 minutes walk away from the office. I walk to work. It's very good for thinking. You could be planning your day on your way in."

Working for 13 years in the stock exchange was "great", she says. "The exchange doubled in size during the time I was there. I was the first listing person to be appointed. At that time, we were very much a branch of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the exchange was moving from being an organisation that would purely service the needs of members to servicing the needs of the community which was not only stockbrokers but companies and investors, as well as being a business in itself.

"I was there through the separation from the LSE, the widening of the business focus to investors and listed companies, building up the business and divisions. So it was a very exciting and challenging time and it was great to be part of that.

"It's a very different organisation now from the one I joined. It's due to the people who work there, who are very business-focused.

"When I joined I was the thirteenth employee. Since that time it has built up its business, it's the leading centre in the world for listing investment funds. It's getting into the business of listing asset-backed securities. That is a very important initiative emerging in the last number of years in the securities market.

"It's much more dynamic than people give it credit for. We had the launch of the electronic listing system last June - that made the Irish equity market accessible all over the world."

But does a small independent stock exchange have a future in global terms? "I don't think anybody knows what will happen in the end. The events of the last couple of years have shown that. A number of alliances have come and gone and nothing has happened.

"There was going to be a `super exchange' and no-one else would matter . . . eventually there will be a single European capital market, but in what form is anybody's guess. There will always be requirements for specialists, niches, so I wouldn't be so pessimistic about the future of small exchanges. Certainly, the trend is for merging rather than diversification."

Stockbroking itself has changed a good deal over the years and she says this is because brokers have had to become more client-focused and more attuned to their needs.

"It's no longer the case that you flog Irish equities to clients. You think what clients need, what are the best opportunities, how can you create the best wealth-creation opportunities.

"Clients want to deal online. There need to be quicker executions. It's become faster and more immediate. One of the things I like about Dolmen is its international focus. In the last number of years, the best opportunities have not been in the Irish market - only 15 per cent of our trading investments have been in Ireland, the rest in Britain and the US.

"You also have to look at what else your clients need: if the market is going to be volatile, you have to look at other initiatives. We've launched a securitisation arm where we will be offering securitised products which will provide clients with different investment options depending on the level of risk they want to take. We have also introduced pensions products and our own online investment arm."

Dolmen Butler Briscoe focuses on retail investors rather than institutions and, according to Ms Jones, has a key interest "in targeting high net worth individuals and directors of corporates as well as smaller investors".

She says somebody with, say, £2,000 (P2,539) to invest would be welcome as a client. "One of the things we're working on is our online broking. That would be a very easy method of dealing for small investors. No matter how small the amount, you will be able to deal with us in a pretty painless way.

"Statistics tell you a longterm business equity is the best investment. Everybody is looking at their pension nowadays. There is a lot more money washing around than there used to be. Everybody is an investor. The trick is focusing on what clients need and making sure they know what opportunities are available to them."

And how would she advise potential stock market players? "The advice I would give is that they need professional advice, to know what they don't know. The key advice they will get is that they shouldn't invest more than they can afford and should diversify their investment . . . not put all their eggs in one basket."

Gerardine Jones is married to banker Mr Joe Dempsey. She comes from Roscommon town, where her brother Peter is a solicitor. She's a well-regarded punter - although she says that since her father died, she doesn't have the same interest in racing as she once had.

After school in the Mercy Convent in Roscommon, she studied economics in UCD and joined Ernst & Young in Dublin, where she qualified as a chartered accountant. She admits to having an interest in the theatre, reading and cooking. As a woman in a very male world, has she ever found any obstacles? She looks surprised and says: "I find the fact that I'm a woman is totally irrelevant. I've never experienced any advantage or disadvantage through being a woman."