It takes some nerve to address a meeting that is hot for specifics and tell it absolutely nothing, but John Kennedy, director of European Capital of Culture: Cork 2005, has nerve aplenty.

He is the master of the dusty answer, and at a recent meeting of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland, where he asked members for their support, he was playing his cards close to his chest. This is probably exactly what Cork needs if it is to pull off one of the greatest challenges it has ever faced. As Kennedy puts it, this will be “rekindle what Cork is, to explore what it might become and demonstrate what it can do.”

He must do all this without really knowing Cork, which he persistently described at the meeting as suffering from second-city syndrome. This condition may once have been relevant, but it was never prevalent, and by now it has disappeared almost completely from the city's thinking. But Kennedy comes from Dublin, where that notion of Cork's psychology still exists.

His career suggests he is a fast learner, however. Part of U2's team for more than 20 years, including as tour director, he has also specialised in managing corporate, national and international events. His expertise covers a map of the entertainment world from Woodstock to the Abbey Theatre, from Planxty to Rory Gallagher, and includes a close and productive relationship with television, video and other media companies.

Arriving in Cork only last October to an office staffed by two executives, he has added Tony Sheehan of the Fire Station artists' studios in Dublin, whose brief will be community-related proposals, and Philip Mackeown of the SuperValu supermarket family, whose task is to develop sponsorship, especially with large companies looking to fund specific projects.

Kennedy has also engaged local firm Kearney Melia Communications as publicist for Cork 2005. Late last week he announced the appointment of Mary McCarthy of the National Sculpture Factory (and previously curator of the international residency programme at IMMA) as deputy director and director of programme development.

Responsible for literary programme development is poet Tom McCarthy, while project manager and administrator is American Tracy McCormack, whose eight years of project management leadership includes working at Circadence Corporation, a Colorado-based e-commerce technology firm.

Kennedy is preparing an initial list of programmes to announce at the end of next month. His resistance to premature publicity is easy to understand: Cork is the smallest city ever to be named European Capital of Culture and is going to have the smallest budget as well - €13 million compared with €75 million for Lille, which is sharing the title next year with the Italian city of Genoa.

The timescale is daunting: there are 23 months left in which to plan, fund and produce a year-long cultural festival that involves all aspects of the community, from urban renewal to opera, managing the different expectations and balancing the interests - and potential - of different stakeholders while watching out for what Kennedy called solo runs.

His brief was also clouded by the almost metaphysical reasoning of Robert Palmer, chairman of the judging panel. When asked why it had chosen Cork, he responded with the enigmatic suggestion that "there is something under the footpaths of Cork trying to come out".

If there is, this is the business of the city manager, Joe Gavin, who is also going to have to field local anxieties about development projects that seem to be slipping off the schedules. Schemes such as a new school of music, once trumpeted as an essential component of Cork's campaign for the title, has been put on ice because of resistance from the Departments of Finance and of Education.

As far as Kennedy is concerned, Gavin has assured him that the €13 million budget for 2005 is ring-fenced. He has also been assured that Blackrock Castle, which thanks to Gavin now belongs to the local authority, will be used for the capital-of-culture year. Kennedy admitted he has not yet seen the castle, which is boarded up, fenced off and almost as wet inside as out on its tide-washed rocks at the mouth of the River Lee.

Still, such a restored and prominent landmark could become a symbol of what Kennedy regards as the crucial aspect of the Cork 2005: its legacy. He was advised early on to see the year as a beginning, not as an end. His key words are convergence - by which ideas, people and funds coalesce in new alliances - and delivery, the presentation of whatever that convergence produces in terms of programming. He is taking an organic approach, letting proposals arrive slowly - more or less, as he said in a metaphor he will surely outgrow, from under the footpaths.

The people of Cork have lived with the disruption of their city's new drainage scheme for the past five years and have a very good idea of what's under the footpaths. They know, even if Kennedy does not, that the capital of culture for 2005 isn't down there.