Construction House is well named these days. Outside the headquarters of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), on Canal Road, Dublin, are workmen, scaffolding and a general air of, well, construction.

Mr Liam Kelleher, the director general of the construction employers' organisation for the past six years, explains that an architectural competition was held to build a new entrance and "make the building more energy efficient".

As a Millennium project, a sculpture will also be commissioned. "We have another mini competition for a suitable sculpture which would have resonants of the industry and yet would be an appropriate piece of sculpture to have at the entrance to the building," he says.

It's all a long way from the time when being Irish was a byword for being an unskilled builders' labourer on a foreign building site. Today, there are 136,000 people employed in the industry, an increase of 50,000 or 58 per cent in five years.

He cites the instance when an advertisement was placed by the CIF in the Irish Post in Britain advertising vacancies in the building industry.

"It was picked up by all sorts of papers and was on page one of the Wall Street Journal. . . It has been reversed. It is symbolic of the change in Ireland's fortunes," he says.

From Mount Merrion, he went to school in Oatlands College, an education, he says, which was "narrower than it needed to have been, even then". He went on to study mathematics and economics at UCD. He then completed a masters in economics and followed in his father's footsteps in working for a State development agency.

His father, Bill, worked for the Industrial Development Authority, but Liam Kelleher went to work for the Irish Export Board, the precursor to the Irish Trade Board. He rose to the position of European director, saying there were comparable budgets to the CIF's annual £3.5 million (€4.44 million)

But when the position in the CIF came up in 1993, he says he was ready for a change. "As European director, it was a job that suited me and one that I liked. But I knew it would not last forever, I know the next job might not be as attractive."

Although the federation's industrial relations role has become more structured with the advent of national wage agreements, the dispute with the scaffolders has thrust the CIF back into its stereotypical role of sparring partner with an employee group.

Mr Kelleher puts his faith in the national wage agreement model, believing that for the next national plan, infrastructural investment should be "the number one objective".

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), where the Government and the private sector jointly invest in projects, will form an important part in this building programme.

"The real enemy of investment is uncertainty, uncertainty about policies, uncertainty about interest rates and uncertainty about future growth rates."

In the past, the State experienced the most severe cyclical economic cycles in Europe after Finland, but he believes that pattern has been broken. "I think the prospects, if we all keep our heads, have never been better."

But inflationary pressures are building up in the housing market. Mr Kelleher has argued for a relaxing of mortgage lending criteria in the context of supply side reforms. He has consistently advocated reform of the planning process saying the laws, as they stand, were drafted when "construction periods took a much longer time, when economic growth was much slower than it has been for the past five years".

The growth is akin to Dublin's golden age in the late 17th century, he says, in the period immediately before the Act of Union when the city flourished as a trade centre.

He has been reading Frank McDonald's book The Destruction of Dublin and says the loss of part of the city's Georgian heritage in the 1960s and 1970s was "a shame".

"It happened in a particular era. I think a certain amount of it would go if it was around today.

"At the same time part of what gives Dublin its character is the Georgian or the 19th century parts of the city, and that is an integral part of the city."

The construction industry has much to be proud of, he declares. "You are talking about companies which have fitted out the Intels, the Fab 10s and 14s, working to the highest international standards. . . The investment by companies in equipment and training and apprentices in their workforce generally has increased enormously."

But periodically, the CIF has been confronted with waves of publicity on industry standards, deaths in the workplace, industrial relations, the black economy and bad management practices.

Mr Kelleher insists that the majority of his members "are exemplary corporate citizens". "They pay their taxes, they pay their employees a good wage, they pay their pension contributions, and they are proud of what they build."

Gazumping, the practice of raising a house price or accepting a higher offer for a house after a sale price has been agreed verbally, is one headline-grabbing issue in a time when people stretch themselves to the limit to buy their homes.

He describes the attempts by the Irish Homebuilders Association (IHBA), the CIF subsidiary, to stamp out the practice as "an honest attempt". The IHBA has drawn up a disciplinary code to discourage the practice.

When encountering seemingly intractable problems, he describes himself as "a slow burner". "I internalise things and I remember them and I would then attempt to come back to them again.

"I would tend to instinctively, mentally take a step back and regroup," he says.

Married with two daughters, he now lives in Monkstown, a place he feels is part of his upbringing as a location he visited as a boy. He enjoys wine and good food, in particular seafood dishes, and cites Roly's Bistro, Ballsbridge, and La Strada in Dun Laoghaoire as favourite eating houses.