Remarkably successful, with a succession of projects like Liffey Valley in Dublin and Mahon Point in Cork, and at the age of 67 when most are thinking of retirement, he's still going strong, O'Callaghan has more schemes in the pipeline for his native Cork and elsewhere.

The reason he has been so much in the public eye is that in the 1990s, an Irish property developer based in England called Tom Gilmartin had his eye on the Quarryvale site in west Dublin, which he wanted to develop for retail. His scheme didn't go ahead, but Owen O'Callaghan took over the project and with the help of Grosvenor Holdings - owned by the Duke of Westminster, the third richest man in Britain - did develop what has proved to be the highly successful Liffey Valley shopping centre. It has turned out to an absolute gold mine for O'Callaghan, a real profits earner.

Out of the spat between Gilmartin and O'Callaghan emerged the Mahon Tribunal, to investigate planning corruption. Those investigations have now been going on for the past 11 years. A key witness has been the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. He left office in early May, much earlier than he had planned, due to the intense media coverage and speculation that has swirled around him because of appearances by himself and others connected with him at the tribunal. It's possible that Ahern may now face jail on corruption charges, but O'Callaghan has managed to sail through the proceedings unscathed.

However, at one recent Tribunal hearing, two activists from Cork said that Owen O'Callaghan kicked his then business partner Tom Gilmartin when the latter mentioned a £50,000 payment to a senior politician. One of the activists, Pat Jennings, said that Gilmartin cried out after being kicked by O'Callaghan and that this had stopped him mentioning the name of the politician.

Owen O'Callaghan remains steadfast in his absolute denials that he ever gave Bertie Ahern any money in brown envelopes. In fact recently, noted broadcaster Eamon Dunphy, who has had many dealings with O'Callaghan, says that he has always found the king of Cork property development an honest and straightforward person, very patient and businesslike in his dealings. Dunphy, a former footballer, has a great reputation for telling it as it is, so when he testified to O'Callaghan's good character, most people believed him.

O'Callaghan has long had a great eye for development potential and in the mid-1990s, he was very involved in the creation of the Golden Island shopping centre in Athlone, Co Westmeath. Such are O'Callaghan's political connections that he persuaded the then outgoing Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government to grant tax designation for the project, the day before it went out of office in 1996.

Shopping centre developments by him before Athlone had included the Arthur's Quay shopping centre in the centre of Limerick. The Carlow shopping centre is another of his myriad retail projects.

After Athlone came Liffey Valley, which opened in 1999. Some of the income generated by Liffey Valley has come from selling development land on the vast site, but outside the centre. Now the plan is that within the next two years Liffey Valley will double in size, enabling it to retain its lead as one of the biggest such centres in Ireland. The €500m spend on the 30,000 sq m extension will consolidate its position as one of Ireland's top malls and some of the new units should be ready in time for Christmas 2009.

But the development of the Quarryvale site was where Bertie Ahern's troubles started. When the shopping centre was being built, an ancient fairy fort on the site was demolished. In the old days, there was widely believed folklore in Ireland that it was extremely unlucky to demolish or destroy a fairy fort or a fairy tree and that anyone who did so would suffer divine retribution. Co Clare folklore expert Eddie Lenihan says that the wrath of the gods has followed the destruction of that Quarryvale fairy fort. Ahern's is the latest political scalp to be claimed in the interminable investigation, which had its origins in Quarryvale.

However, Owen O'Callaghan has managed to go from strength to strength. In the Sunday Times Rich List for 2008, his wealth is put at €144m. However, sources in the property industry say that this figure seriously underestimates O'Callaghan's true worth.

After Liffey Valley came Mahon Point just east of Cork city, which O'Callaghan developed at an initial cost of €500m. It opened in the spring of 2005 and since then, much progress has been made on doubling the initial 35,000 sq m of retail space. Other developments there have included a retail park, while O'Callaghan's latest phase for the Mahon Point is a €300m development, largely residential, close to the shopping centre.

Then four years ago, O'Callaghan paid €30m to Thomas Crosbie Holdings, owners of the Irish Examiner, Evening Echo and many other newspapers, for their city-centre properties based around Academy Street in Cork, just off Patrick Street. His grand plan is for a highly ambitious €500m scheme that should be ready next year at about the same time as his smaller €75m scheme in nearby Half Moon Street.

Those are just some of the developer's interests. Last September he announced a major extension of his activities in the UK and mainland Europe, although how much these will be curtailed by the credit crunch remains to be seen. It was then calculated that Owen O'Callaghan had something like €2bn of developments under construction or in planning, in Ireland and elsewhere.

Since it was founded in 1969, O'Callaghan Properties and its associated companies has become one of the most successful in Ireland. In addition to the raft of retail development, O'Callaghan's company completed its 6,000th new house in Ireland.

As well as O'Callaghan Properties, his other interests include shares in another developer, Moyglen Holdings, the offshore Blackwater Property and a trust whose interests include property in London.

O'Callaghan says the toughest issues he faces are getting satisfactory and viable planning permissions and coping with the huge increases in land prices over the last few years. However, the financial landscape in 2008 is much different from previous years, and yet Owen O'Callaghan is singularly adept at sailing through recessionary times and some of his best deals have been done when market conditions were tightest.

He remains steadfastly optimistic about the Irish market. Recently he said he believed that commercial property values would fall by about 15 per cent in commuter belts and in rural towns, but would hold up in cities and larger towns. "Prime locations, particularly city centres, will always succeed and hold their value".

Owen O'Callaghan's skills in retail property development have been well acknowledged by his peers in the industry; four years ago he was named as Irish Property Developer of the Year. As far as O'Callaghan Properties is concerned, he has ensured that it doesn't have a hierarchical management structure, that everyone mucks in together and that everyone has an equal shout. He does admit that one person more than any other has inspired him - Dermot Desmond.

Failures have been very few; one of the best known was a proposal to build a €7bn Disney-style entertainment complex in north Co Dublin called Vega City. The plan was that the scheme, when completed, would attract about 37 million visitors a year and be to Dublin what Disneyland Resort is to Paris. At the time, five years ago, it was described as O'Callaghan's biggest ever challenge; it never happened.

Little is known publicly about Owen O'Callaghan the man. In recent years he has become active in helping cultural and arts groups and activities in his home territory in the Cork area. Show jumping is another area of interest.

But within this interest lies personal tragedy. His daughter Hazel followed her father's pursuit in show jumping and became a noted competitor in her own right. In June 2002, after taking part in a West of Ireland competition, she returned to a stud at Maynooth, Co Kildare, and was unloading a horse from a lorry. She slipped off the lorry's ramp and suffered a serious head injury, from which she died in a Dublin hospital a fortnight later, aged 22.

O'Callaghan is on record as saying that it's difficult to recharge his batteries, with either sports or hobbies. But he is interested in golf, which he says he plays badly if enthusiastically.

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