Main causes of stress:
A lot of what we do in Dublin Corporation gets a lot of media attention and a lot of public attention, and you are always conscious that you work in public, so that's a pressure in itself.
One of the stresses in local government is the sheer variety of things you have to deal with every day.
We have 6,500 staff and we are involved in about 600 individual services, as well as bigger projects.
I put in a lot of time: on average, close enough to a 12-hour day. I go to a lot of functions, some of them ours, some other people's.
A lot of them are enjoyable, of course, but you are working as well, and you are meeting people and making business decisions.
I always believe the best way to do business is in the informal way, and I've a strong belief that the best decisions are often made late at night over a pint.
Coping with stress:
My wife died five years ago, and that was the most stressful part of my life by a long shot.
I'm very glad to have the children, and I'm not sure how I'd manage without them. I have four girls, two of them at home.
I hugely enjoy being with them and going away on holidays with them.
I find the essence of stress is how you handle it, and I think I handle it pretty well. I confine myself to the things I can handle easily enough within the time available.
I also have a number of hugely able people around me who sieve out a lot of things for me. In a way, they really deal with the things that would otherwise cause me a lot of stress.
Winding down:
There are two things I try to do as much as I can, but I can obviously never do them enough.
They are playing tennis at my local club, which I really enjoy because there's a social side as well; and any chance I get, I try to head out of town to the mountains.
I was born at the foot of the Galtee Mountains, and I like to get back to that environment, where it's peaceful and you can walk for hours. That can be the best therapy.
In conversation with Elaine Edwards