His origins are humble, though.Mulryan comes from the small village of Oran in Co Roscommon in the west of Ireland. It's still a very underdeveloped part of Ireland, far from the bright lights and myriad cranes of Dublin but Mulryan has always maintained his family connections with the area, dropping in to see his mother by helicopter.

Both his parents were farmers. When the young Sean left school at the age of 17, he started work as a stonemason, quickly winning a construction scholarship with the state training agency for apprentices, then known as AnCO, now called Fas.

The young Mulryan worked in Galway for four years, then for a further two years in Athlone, before moving to Dublin. He set up his first firm in 1982, a small house building and development concern, in a small village in west Co Wicklow, not far from Dublin. The village is called Ballymore Eustace and that's why his property company is called Ballymore.

Today Mulryan, his wife Bernadine and their five children live in the same area, but on the 93ha Ardenode Stud. They are keen racegoers and owners.

Mulryan soon got into the big time with house building schemes in Ireland and currently, Ballymore Properties has four massive schemes on the go in Ireland, with two more major ones coming up soon. He often works on joint deals with other developers, such as Castlethorn.

He's also expanded substantially into Britain, beginning with apartment development in central London in 1992. Since then, his London interest has been characterised by large scale apartment blocks in Westminster and the Docklands.

Following London, he began developing in the regions. Outside London, his company has bought a number of former Railtrack sites in, and close to, main line rail stations, such as Snow Hill in Birmingham and Temple Meads in Bristol. What he aims to do is regenerate inner city sites that have good transport links.

He's also moved strongly in central and eastern Europe, opening his first office in Prague five years ago, followed by offices in Bratislava and Budapest in 2003. In Wenceslas Square in Prague, Ballymore is currently developing its largest scheme in the Czech Republic - 60,000 sq m of offices, retail and homes. Bratislava has Ballymore's flagship scheme in central Europe, the Eurovea international trade centre, which includes Slovakia's first super-regional 55,000 sq m shopping destination. He's working on a similar-sized mixed-use development in the centre of Budapest, close to the main railway station. He's also started an involvement with property development in Romania.

Here in Ireland, the Whitewater shopping centre scheme in Newbridge was Mulryan's first big involvement in such a retail development. Mulryan conducted the E400m development on a 50:50 basis with Sean Dunne of Mountbrook Homes, another major house builder in Ireland.

Records in the Companies Registration Office, Dublin, show that Ballymore Developments sold its 50 per cent stake in Newbridge Investments, the developer of Whitewater, in April 2004. That stake went for E725,000 - to Sean Mulryan's wife Bernadine.

With its imaginative design, as a projct Whitewater showed off Mulryan's meticulous love of detail. Business colleagues say that this is Mulryan's strongest business attribute. He is said to want everything done properly, or not done at all. He also spends a lot of time pre-planning developments, which is what happened with Whitewater.

The overall design of Whitewater was the brief of Dublin architectural practice Henry J Lyons, while the interior design was the responsibility of renowned London-based specialist, Benoy. The end result, now that the centre is open, is described by Larry Brennan of Hamilton Osborne King, Dublin, a joint letting agent for the centre: "Whitewater beats Grafton Street any day." Mulryan himself says that since Whitewater is so fashion focused, it gives the people of the Midlands region a real alternative to shopping in Dublin.

The Ballymore Properties group today has headquarter offices in Dublin and London as well local office in the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Hungary. The group turns over about E240m and makes post-tax profits of over E8m, employing about 150 people directly.

Yet despite the vast scale of his developments, he's the kind of person who likes to go through the snag lists himself to make sure that everything is as it should be. That's what he does with all his housing developments and that's precisely what he did with Whitewater when it was under construction. Coming from a building background, he's rare among developers and it also means that he knows the trade inside out, from a practical perspective.

Last autumn, Mulryan, who controls his property empire himself, appointed Dr Michael Smurfit to the board of Ballymore Properties. But despite this appointment, Ballymore Properties has strongly denied that this means that the group is going to go public.

Outside his property development interests, horse racing and golf (he also has a house on the K Club in Co Kildare, where the 2006 Ryder Cup will be staged,) he's also keenly interested in Gaelic sports and sponsors his county's main GAA team, rarely missing a match.

He does a lot of un-publicised work for charity. A very generous man, he's often described as a businessman with a conscience. He's also described as a quiet man, much liked in the industry for his professional approach. Mulyran may have famously tousled hair, but he's always immaculately dressed in the most expensive suits.

He's also a strong supporter of the Fianna Fail political party, which has been in government for much of the past 75 years. He's a regular visitor to the party's tent at the Galway races every summer, which is a stomping ground for construction and property development magnates close to the party.

Apart from all his current developments, he's very much involved in a new private hospital development in Ireland, the Heritage medical clinic, which is due to open later this summer on land owned by Mulryan in Lucan, close to Ballymore's headquarters.

But he also has another big tussle on the retailing front in Ireland coming up. He is the lead developer in the consortium that wants to complete the Florentine centre in Bray, Co Wicklow, a major commuter town just south of Dublin. Work started on the centre in 2004 but was stopped when the consortium bought more land that significantly increased the size of the site.

Bray Town Council is about to announce its verdict on the new look Florentine Centre, which is right in the centre of Bray. But if the plans do get the go-ahead, they face strong opposition from the plans of the Pizzaro consortium, which wants to build a E2bn scheme, with much retail, just up the road from the Florentine Centre. This scheme is also going through planning now, so it looks as the next few months is going to see Sean Mulryan back in the news for his latest Irish retailing scheme.

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