We spend half the time rolling around the place laughing at theatrical disasters past. Tony O Dalaigh summons up an Abbey festival preview which saw the cast desperately trying to hold back a revolving wall because the scene wasn't over, and then moves on to another preview in England with a high-profile Irish actor which provoked a fight in the auditorium: "Give him a chance, it's only a preview!" "Not likely, I paid £12 to see this rubbish . . . "

He seems to be a man who gets fun out of everything - in hindsight, he can even enjoy the spectacle of the Archaos circus tent blowing away in the winds of Tallaght during the 1992 festival - and he is not sorry to be retiring as director of the festival: "If a festival is under the same person for 20 years, it goes stale," he says. "And I think we have been lucky to hold on to Fergus [Linehan] as long as we have. I wouldn't keep him from the job any longer."

O Dalaigh leaves Linehan a festival which has the comfort of the support of a new name sponsor, Eircom, committed to the festival for at least two years. He has overseen the transformation of the event from a sprawling monster of many shows, few of which were subsidised by the festival, to the present, slimmed-down line-up of big shows. It has been a success, but has required nerve: "There are more financial risks, really, bigger fees."

His favourite festival show in his 10 years as director has been Theatre de Complicite's Street of Crocodiles. A major disappointment was the fact that they never brought in the same company's The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol. This year he would have liked to have brought in Conall Morrison's production of Martin Guerre.

But there are few real regrets and there is no fear for the festival's future: "I feel", he says easily, "that Fergus will inevitably reshape the administration". He will continue working with the event, organising the Friends' programme of trips and visits and privileges: "I'm a frustrated travel agent, really."

And, of course, he already has a new project, on which he has agreed to work two days a week - the new Blanchardstown Arts Centre. Now he is leaning forward: "It's a very exciting place. It's wonderful that it came from a local initiative. There's an artists' studio and a rehearsal space as well as a theatre. I think the potential is enormous."

He does hope, however, to spend more time with his wife, Margaret, who has been, he says, "tremendously patient". She knew what she married - she noticed, says O Dalaigh, that her husband became "very silent" when he went back to his civil service job in 1978, following his years with Irish National Opera and the Irish Theatre Company: "You can be miscast in the civil service as well as anywhere else - and I was very, very miscast in industrial relations.".

Then suddenly, he was running the Royal Hospital Kilmainham - "Do you remember the Midsummer Night's Dream we did in the square?" (I remember Bottom speaking in a high-pitched Cork accent: "Oh, Tisbe!") Then the last decade, the most professionally rewarding of his life, so far: "I've been lucky," he says, "because without having had a very strong urge to do anything in particular, I've had a string of interesting jobs."

Well, Irish theatre-goers have been lucky, too.