The mention of Ned O'Keeffe's name at a focus group would probably provoke various responses; "consummate politician" perhaps, or "Cork", or "Munster accent". Researchers would be surprised to hear: "Oh yeah, he's the guy in charge of 14 per cent of our GDP."
But it's true. Ned O'Keeffe is in effect the Minister for Food, an area of crucial importance to the Irish economy. The Government says that while farming represents 6.2 per cent of GDP, the agri-food sector defined as agriculture, food, drinks and tobacco accounts for 14.1 per cent, and £5 billion of exports.
It's an area seeing rapid change, with more and more emphasis on adding value to the raw produce.
"We have come from a situation in the early 1980s where we were practically a totally commodity-based food industry, to ingredients and consumer food," Mr O'Keeffe says. "But ingredients is only half the battle, we have to go further."
The Government's plan, as outlined in "Action Programme for the Millennium", specifically places the emphasis not on the farmer, but on the consumer.
Mr O'Keeffe, himself a major pig farmer, does not see this change as damaging farmers' interests.
"The farmer is more and more aware every day of safety and quality. There is no one more conscious of that now than the farming community, because farmers can see quality as the way forward if they are to get the high return and maintain their income levels."
The BSE scare came as an enormous shock to the Irish agri-food business, he says, and has been a catalyst for further change: "While the BSE is behind us, it has focused us on one thing, and that is that the consumer is king. We have been forced to realise that."
It is no longer good enough, he believes, for Irish food to rely on the State's green image, or even good marketing. The European consumer has become extremely sophisticated, and wants guarantees of quality.
"We're practically exporting 85 per cent of the total of what we produce, and if we are to maintain that value to the economy we must have guaranteed quality and assurances. Otherwise we will fail in the export market. We as a country, of all EU countries, have to be leaders in the field of quality," he says.
His plan to do this revolves around the 1974 Food Standards Act, which gives the Minister the right to impose national standards of quality in food. There are several quality schemes already in place, but these are mostly voluntary, and, he points out, no one is held responsible when something goes wrong.
"We need a national standard for quality, underpinned by law, and I would have to stand over it," he says.
Mr O'Keeffe's team in the Department of Agriculture has been examining the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points system originally developed in the US for astronauts because of the danger of disease-bearing bacteria in space as a possible model for tracking, monitoring and testing all Irish food.
"We're talking about the highest standard of certification, and that's what we're after here," he says.
All existing quality schemes would be audited, probably by Teagasc, and allowed to continue only if they exceeded the State standards. It would mean that any food or drink sold either at home or abroad that did not come up to scratch could be traced right back to its source, he adds.
Mr O'Keeffe says there is a certain urgency about the project, as other EU countries are already working on similar schemes. For Irish products to win out in the market place, he adds, the quality assurance scheme must be up and running soon.
Current EU proposals on milk quotas would see the Republic receive only a small increase. But if Ireland were to be re-defined as a "hill country", as Austria has been, Irish farmers and dairy products producers would come out ahead.
