IRELAND IS well positioned to weather the current economic storm thanks to the high quality of Irish CEOs, according to Karl Croke, managing partner of one of Ireland's leading executive search companies, Amrop Strategis.

Ireland Inc is in its second generation of home-grown management and leadership and can hold our heads up in a global company, observes Croke - but, he says, we are all going to have to tighten the belt.

"It has never been more important for CEOs to have the right people, strategy and structures in place to ensure they can survive potentially very tough times.

"While it is often said that people are a company's best asset, it is actually having the right people that is critical," he said.

Organisations still need senior managers, explains Croke. "Finding the right people is crucial to the ongoing success of these organisations. In any calendar year we do about 80 to 85 searches. It's not a volume business. It's high level and highly intensive for a couple of months."

Chief executives and the vice-presidents of sales and marketing are pretty talented individuals and have a value and value themselves, says Croke.

"Their talents are useful and rare. There is always a market for very good talent."

That's reflected in Amrop Strategis' bottom line. It's a business in expansion mode. His business is growing, says Croke.

"2007 was the best year we ever had and already the projected 12- month figures for 2008 are 11 or 12 per cent up on 2007."

He attributes this to the fact that in bad times, more chief executives lose their jobs.

"In pressurised economic circumstances, having the right leadership is crucial. In general, Irish CEOs have good judgment, strong intellect, can relate to people, and are excellent communicators.

"They also operate without fear and have an acute awareness that they must drive on their businesses, even during difficult times.

"These qualities mean that the engine of Ireland's economy is in good hands," commented Croke.

The cooled market has advantages, he explains. "It means you can put a much more attractive offer on to the table. The pluses are massive.

"In the United States, for instance, the financial services landscape is extremely different to the picture illustrated two or three years ago.

"The headline-making $2-3 million bonuses don't exist any more. In the past, some of our organisations couldn't have afforded that. It is now much easier to source better and better executives from the United States."

There have been changes, too, in remuneration demands being made. "These individuals' waking thoughts are about the organisation and its structure - it's a seven-days-a week thinking, plotting and reviewing," he says.

Over the last five years, compensation at senior level has become more and more related to performance with as much as 20 to 30 per cent of the total remuneration on offer being performance-related, explains the managing partner.

Demand within the marketplace too also shifted. Four and five years ago there was a bias in the market place towards younger, hungrier executives, continues Croke, but there's been a maturing in the market.

"We now need people with more experience, who understand these cycles and who have the maturity in this different business cycle to blend in with the younger executives."

Taking a macro view of the economy, it's a tougher place and the crucial issue for government is our competitiveness and infrastructure, he adds.

Small companies are microcosms of the economy, there's lots of strength, lots of ambition and in a lot of cases, a strategy has been created before the liquidity crises. You review the strategy, he says.

"For some, access to capital is a problem and decisions may take longer - maybe you can't drive the business on all three fronts, but they're selecting two and taking a shorter route to market but they're still doing due diligence even if the sequencing of things is a little different but throughout common sense prevails."

He likens Amrop to the merchant banks of old. It keeps our head down, he says. "The people who need to know, know we're there, doing what we do best, providing leadership services."