Smyth is paying €320m to Quinlan Private for its major stake in the centre. He already owns 18 retail outlets there through his property development company Alburn, but following the recent deal, he has added another 68 shops that had been in the portfolio built up at the centre since 1991 by Quinlan Private.

This latest deal means that Smyth now owns about half of The Square; while the remaining centre stakeholders are AIB Investment Managers and the McCormack family.

Smyth says that in the past, the centre had suffered from having too many owners. He believes that he and the other two owners are now well placed to bring the centre back to its original iconic status. It may have suffered because of competition from the likes of Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley, but it's still pulling in 19 million shoppers a year.

The Square is on 2.83 ha, but has room to expand on a further 23 ha. Smyth is already planning €500m worth of developments there. During the next two years, planned construction will include new outlets for retailers such as Penneys and TK Maxx.

But a current legal row needs to be settled first. An action was recently brought by Redfern, the sole beneficiary of Alburn, against Larry O'Mahony and Thomas McFeely of Lowe Taverns over an alleged contract agreement dating from August 2005.

In the Dublin High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly said that The Square seemed to have given rise to more litigation than any other piece of real estate in Ireland.

Smyth has already paid South Dublin County Council €24m for the freehold to the car park, but he still has to reach an agreement with O'Mahony and McFeely and their company Lowe Taverns over the rights to use it.

However, assuming that the current legal wrangle over the car park is sorted, Smyth's ultimate ambition is to restore the prestige of The Square shopping centre with the completion of the phase three and four extensions.

Cormac Kennedy, director of retail at CBRE Dublin, says that The Square is falling behind more modern centres in Dublin. "Retailers do well there, but could do better if they had bigger units."

Rent levels at The Square are a little more than half that obtained at Liffey Valley and by comparison with newer centres, such as Blanchardstown and Dundrum, The Square now looks jaded.

A major revamp and extension in line with Smyth's plans will be highly beneficial, both to the retailers themselves and to Smyth.

expelled

Noel Smyth (56) and his wife Anne-Marie (55) are between them worth €155m according to The Sunday Times' Rich List 2007 and are using their Alburn property investment vehicle to build their property portfolio in both Ireland and Britain. They now have about €650m in investment and development properties in Ireland and Britain.

Smyth is originally from Co Galway, the eldest of four children and, by his own admission, a "born messer" at school - he managed to achieve the rare feat of being expelled from school at the tender age of six.

His father gave up a secure job to become a golf professional and up until the time Smyth was 14, as his father switched clubs, they also moved a number of times. Family homes included Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny and Tralee before settling in Bray in Co Wicklow.

Smyth attended St Brendan's Christian Brothers secondary school in Bray, but after he did badly in the Leaving Certificate examination, he vowed never to do badly in an exam again and kept his word.

He then qualified in Law at University College Dublin, before working in a number of legal practices. Smyth set up his own practice in 1981.

He had already worked with a number of property development clients, who stayed with him when he started his own practice, and this encouraged him to develop his own interest in property.

Smyth's first big retail deal was in the late 1980s, when he was involved in the buying and selling of the H Williams supermarket outlets. At this same time, he carried out his first major retail development, a shopping centre in Galway. By the end of the 1980s, he was already very wealthy.

One of his legal clients was Ben Dunne, formerly of Dunnes Stores. When Dunne was caught in a Florida hotel with cocaine and a call girl, it was Smyth who advised him on how to handle the matter with the media, by being completely open and up front. When the Dunne family subsequently removed Ben Dunne from any role in the stores group, it was Smyth who handled the negotiations. This took place in the early 1990s.

In subsequent tribunal hearings concerning Ben Dunne and the late Charles Haughey, it was Smyth's phone records that proved Haughey's downfall, when the former Taoiseach was finally forced to admit that Ben Dunne had paid him IR£1.3m.

Noel Smyth subsequently became very involved in building his stake in Dunloe Ewart, but after a bitter takeover battle, he sold his stake for €46m to another developer, Paschal Taggart, five years ago.

dedicated

Since then, Smyth has been involved in countless property deals, many of them retail related.

For instance, at the end of last year, he sold a 2 ha site in Portlaoise, Co Laois, to Aldi for €19m, while earlier this year, he sold two office investments in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, for €10m. In Sandyford, Co Dublin, close to the Alburn headquarters, Smyth has received planning permission for a 23-storey high tower development, while he is also involved in various housing developments.

A few months ago, Smyth's property company paid about €150m for the Sheridan Group's interest in the Odyssey complex in Belfast. Earlier this year, Smyth refinanced €200m of bank debt by issuing bonds secured on a portfolio of offices and industrial properties in the UK, but, he says that at this stage, he has no plans to refinance his Irish properties.

Aside from his legal and property development work, like his father, Smyth manages to find time to enjoy a keen interest in golf and also art. He is a patron of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, to which he and his wife have made numerous donations.

A dedicated family man, he is also well known for his strong religious beliefs, so much so that the family home, located near Leopardstown Racecourse in south Co Dublin, is called Lisieux, after the pilgrimage site in Normandy. Smyth also owns one of the finest houses at the K Club in Co Kildare.

He makes no secret about his devotion to religion. As well as being a regular churchgoer, he also accompanies the penitential pilgrimages to Lough Derg, which may seem a contradiction to some, given that he is a shrewd and aggressive business operator.

Just over two years ago, before Benedict XVI became Pope, Smyth made some very interesting and progressive observations on the Church. He said that since women had brought the most unbelievable changes in the world over the past 40 years, the starting point of Vatican III should be the role of women in the Church.

He also said, in April 2005, that the new Pope should give a voice to the poor.

Smyth went on to make the equally compelling observation that we are currently in the middle of World War III and that the battle concerns Aids, oppression and terrorism.

Given those expressions, it's hardly surprising that Smyth has been constantly in the public eye over plans to develop a new national children's hospital in Dublin. At one stage, he offered to build the new hospital at cost, while on another occasion, he offered the government an alternative site for the building.

Earlier on, Smyth had shown another example of his quest for harmony. With property interests in both Dublin and Belfast, he has proven himself to be a keen promoter of north-south reconciliation. When former US President Bill Clinton was in Ireland in 2001, a major fund-raising dinner was held in Dublin Castle. About €1m was accumulated for the Northern Ireland Fund for Reconciliation and Smyth was the chair of the fund-raising committee.

Noel Smyth is a complex and interesting character in the world of Irish property development and his involvements are so widespread that he's never far from detailed media coverage or legal controversy.

But it's what he is planning to do at The Square during the next couple of years that will really fire up many retailing headlines.

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