Why should a 50-year-old, successful Irish businessman, who has lived in Britain for 20 years, who is financially secure and operating at a senior level in the British dairy industry decide to return to Ireland and take the helm at a company in deep distress?

That was the decision faced by Jim Murphy in late 1996 when he was approached about moving to Cork to take over as chief executive of Golden Vale, the dairy group that had endured a horrible couple of years culminating in the dismissal of chief executive Jim O'Mahony in mid-1996.

It was not just that Golden Vale was in financial trouble. Those problems were bad enough. But Golden Vale had lost the confidence of the investment community after two profits warnings - especially one abominably timed warning on the eve of the Ireland-Italy World Cup game in 1994 when most of Dublin's fund managers were en route to Giants Stadium.

Jim O'Mahony might have coped with the financial misfortunes of Golden Vale, but his tenure as chief executive came to an acrimonious end in mid-1996, following a £3 million-plus fine on the company by the European Commission for over-quota milk production.

The decision to sack Mr O'Mahony only went through on an eight-seven vote of the board and it resulted in a company divided at board level and accused by many of its farmer-shareholders of being unduly influenced by "Dublin stockbroker types" who were blamed for conspiring to remove the chief executive.

So why move from a successful position in Britain to a company in deep difficulty and riven by divisions?

An accountant by training, Jim Murphy was one of a four-strong team which spearheaded a £96 million management buyout of The Cheese Company in Britain, and which sold The Cheese Company three years later to Waterford Foods for £125 million. That gave him financial security and allowed him seriously to consider the approach he received in late 1996 to take over as head of Golden Vale.

"Life has lots of phases. We had lived in London for 25 years, the children were all grown up and dispersed. I had intended to stay on with The Cheese Company after it was sold to Waterford Foods but I didn't have any fixed plans.

"So when the approach came I was interested, not particularly because I wanted to go to Cork - both of us are from Dublin - but I simply had no interest in retiring. What would I do after six months, I always wanted the challenge of taking over a company in trouble."

Another minor matter that helped to persuade Jim Murphy to go to Golden Vale was that it brought him an awful lot closer to his holiday home in Tuosist on the Beara peninsula, where he and his wife Maureen retreat to at every available opportunity.

The divisions in Golden Vale were part of the challenge.

"I made it clear from day one that what went before me was history and was not relevant. My priority was to look to the future and not to analyse the past."

It undoubtedly helped that the boardroom factions that divided almost evenly on the dismissal of Jim O'Mahony had unanimously approved Jim Murphy's appointment. Sources close to the company said at the time that the board members knew they had to bury the hatchet and give their new chief executive the support he would need to turn around the company.

"My big priority during 1997 was to stabilise the financial performance of the company and to restore confidence.

"There was no question that morale had been hit, people had seen the company kicked around the media for months and months. There was an absence of leadership and direction and we needed some new blood."

Mr Murphy went about changing the management structure. "I wanted clarity around the various business units, the organisational structure I found wasn't what I thought was appropriate. My aim was to give people responsibilities."

"The first year was very challenging, I had to assimilate a whole new range of activities and get to grips with the people issues. I think I managed to deal with most of those things reasonably efficiently."

But very quickly it became clear to Jim Murphy that Golden Vale's focus on the dairy industry would have to be altered.

"Very early on, I decided that Golden Vale could not simply be a dairy company in the current climate. I've been in the dairy business for a long time and I know what's coming down the track" - a reference to the increasingly quota-restricted nature of the European dairy industry.

"Companies need a life of their own and it's important that companies pursue different directions. Diversity is hugely important. We decided to develop our consumer products business - our milk business is very important to us but we needed another leg to move forward."

The hugely successful Cheesestrings snack product had been launched in the middle of the 1996-1997 turbulence within the company and before Jim Murphy arrived.

"That was an incredibly brave decision to take, the launch of Cheesestrings cost £3£4 million when profits at the time weren't much more than that. It was well researched, well executed and a credit to everybody who was involved."

Golden Vale added an entire new division when it acquired Rye Valley Foods earlier this year. Rye Valley manufactures prepared meals and represents a conscious move by Golden Vale to develop a large, non-dairy consumer foods business. Other acquisitions in this area of business will follow, but for obvious reasons, Mr Murphy is coy about going into detail.

He admits that Golden Vale is still someway from where he believes it should be.

"Our aim is to become a major force in consumer food products in Ireland, the UK and abroad. I want to add value, not volumes of milk to the business. We want to be focused on markets and customers and new products. But there's still a long way to go."

He emphasises, however, that he is not besotted by brands. "We also operate a successful own-label business and we have very close relationship with these customers. Our aim is to suit the individual needs of the customer and not the collective need of the market," he said.

He emphasises, with a certain amount of pride, that Golden Vale is the biggest supplier of cheese slices in Europe to McDonalds.

"The important role of management is to provide the vision and direction and identify key actions to be taken. I hope I have done that . . . I want Golden Vale to be a major consumer products business, whether that's twice or three times the size we are now I won't speculate, but my aim is to have this company in a very strong position in the market we play in.

"I'm very excited and enjoy what I'm doing - the time I stop enjoying it is the time to move on - I'm nowhere near that position now, so many things still need to be done. I like working, I like the intellectual challenge - I'm just not ready yet to hang up my brain - at the end of the day I have to do something which gives me mental stimulus," he said.

So even with his financial security - "that allows me make decisions I believe are right" - it looks like it will be some years before Jim Murphy is ready to "hang up his brain" and retire to the 6,000 sq ft Georgian house in Blackrock, Cork, he has spent the last year renovating.

And the holiday home in Tuosist will probably remain just that until Mr Murphy has done what he intends to do at Golden Vale.