On this blustery day, it is all bustle at the complex, which includes two hotels and two golf courses, where Rock is a regular. Decorators are working. Outside is part-decked in scaffolding. Mansfield is adding 167 rooms to the existing 1,147 rooms and suites, and lodging a planning application for another 300.

Bulldozers fuss around a golf course hole. Two choppers depart for Britain. Stark in the background is the controversial steel skeleton of Mansfield's proposed 6,000seat convention centre, on which a decision by An Bord Pleanala is expected in April.

CityWest has 57,000sq ft of conference space. The more the merrier, says Mansfield. "The business is unbelievable. Around Europe, there are the guts of 4,000 conferences every year. We would like to get at least 15 to 20 of them." He wants over 40m of annual conference business.

Point Depot owner Harry Crosbie, part of the consortium that won the National Conference Centre contract, has objected to Mansfield's project. He laughs. "People coming from Cork, Kerry and Limerick park here and then head down the quays in taxis.

Unless he builds rooms, that won't change."

Mansfield's proposal won notoriety because of a highprofile planning brouhaha.

In the kitchen of lovely Tassagart House, which Mansfield bought for 1.3m in 1990, along with 160 acres, he shows a dossier detailing his side of the skirmishes. "I've never built a house or a toilet without planning permission in my life. It was just outrageous, " he claims.

Whatever about Mansfield's relationship with the planners, he is entertaining.

On a tour of the restored house, he indicates busts from Humewood House, an obelisk from Santry, the lake his sons built. His three sons are involved in the business.

"It's very unusual for an oul' lad like me to get on so well with them."

He is upset about coverage of the departure of right-hand man John Glynn, complaining about the "fecking outrageous things they print". Glynn is a "very good friend", he says, and he will "support him to the hilt", but he did not try to make him stay.

Glynn was the second recent departure. Seamus Kearney, ex-Aer Lingus, worked at Citywest for three months last year. Mansfield says he brought him in for a trial because he was ill. He has a thyroid condition. "It makes my eyes bulge."

Kearney was "excellent", he says. "He put structures in place that saved us 1m."

Kearney had differences with Glynn, he said, but not with Mansfield or his sons. Anyway, "no matter who you have in there, people say: Jim, where are you, I need you."

Now preoccupying Mansfield are projects including a designer outlet village set to open this year and a planned 195-bedroom hotel at Palmerstown, outside Naas, where Christy O'Connor Jnr designed a golf course.

If five-star doesn't work, he says, he will downgrade. "I don't believe there is much money in five-star hotels."

He has restored Palmerstown House and reckons "it is absolutely gorgeous."

Then there is the convention centre, which Mansfield says he had hoped to build for Ireland's EU presidency.

He puts his case: "South Dublin Co Council gave us a decision to grant permission, " he says. "On that day, we happened to be in their offices and they told us they had issued a decision."

The rules dictated that Mansfield couldn't start building for four weeks, but he admits he took a chance. As local landowner, he says, he believed he was the only one Hnow entitled to object. "I took a calculated risk to carry on."

Up stepped An Taisce, which complained that the council had not notified it.

The case went to An Bord Pleanala. A planning inspector decided that the centre was not, as An Taisce claimed, too near Mansfield's house, a protected structure. Another agreed. But An Bord Pleanala overturned Mansfield's permission and he was ordered to stop work.

"The day I was ordered to stop, I stopped, " he says. "The contractor went on for 24 hours because some of the steel was in a dangerous state." An enforcement notice served a year earlier over work to move an ESB cable was reactivated, and Mansfield brought to court. He was fined 1,700, with costs of 37,000. He appealed.

Another contretemps was over the use of a yard, in which Mansfield says he allowed contractors widening Fortunestown Lane to park. He ran into trouble over its resurfacing, which he says was done by the contractors.

Again, he was taken to court and fined 1,700, with costs of 37,000. Again, he appealed.

"We appealed both cases to the Circuit Court. The first one was thrown out in five minutes, and the Council decided to withdraw the second one on appeal. I should never have been brought before the court and the Circuit Court proved that."

He also ran into trouble over his golf hotel, for which he got planning permission with 19 conditions attached.

He got 11 enforcement notices, and contests many of the council's complaints.

And then there was the battle over Weston Aerodrome, which he bought in 2001. Once Mansfield had paid his deposit, he went to the planning authority. "I told them what I would like to do: tidy it up, make it an executive airport, build hangars."

He lodged a planning application in December 2001. Still awaiting planning, he built a security fence, a control tower, bits and bobs. The toilets weren't working, he says, so he replaced waste water plant. The hangar where canvas 'cub' planes were stored was decrepit. "I took off the roof and put a single-skin roof over the whole lot."

He was showered with 12 enforcement notices and taken to the High Court. On the second-last day of the case, planning permission came through. Judgment was reserved for over two years, and Mansfield argues that the final finding was broadly in his favour. Part of the judge's ruling was the restatement of An Bord Pleanala's condition that the old hangars had to be knocked within three months of new ones being finished. Mansfield had disputed the completion date with the council, but the old hangars were long gone anyway by the time of the judgement.

Mansfield has submitted a masterplan for Weston, "the finest little executive airport in Europe". He says he has invested nearly 60m in the airport, which he has used since 1987 when he bought his first Cessna Citation. He has been refused permission for a hotel, apartments and airplane museum, but will reapply.

Air movements at Weston have been cut from 144,000 annually to about 90,000, he says. "The improvement is huge, and you'd think to listen to people that there are dreadful things going on."

Developers offered to pay 100m last year for a halfstake in his 240 acres there, he says, but he would prefer to wait to benefit from any potential rezoning.

Keeping him busy, too, are the HSS machinery rental and construction businesses, and 120 acres at Brittas lakes, Co Wicklow, where he wouldn't mind a leisure development. "But life gets short."

CityWest, where he owns 380 acres, is the empire's engine. The hotel will turn over 60m in the year to the end of April, he says. "The bottom line will be 18m, which is as good as any hotel is doing." In his "wildest dreams", he says, he never thought CityWest would become what it is. "We started with 35 rooms. I don't know where you stop."

THE MAN AND HIS COMPANY

JIM MANSFIELD Personal: Married to Anne.

Sons Tony, Jimmy and PJ work in family businesses
Background: Born in Brittas, Co Wicklow, Mansfield left school at 14.
Worked on a farm, then a gravel pit. Bought lorries, moved into selling machinery. Says he was first to charter a ship to bring machinery to the US for auction. "When I got married first, I left the house every morning at 4am and didn't get back until 11pm." Bought Tassagart House and 160 acres at Citywest for 1.3m in 1990.

Interests: "Seeing Citywest go well - that's about all I'm interested in"

CITYWEST HOTEL A 'conference leisure and golf resort' that will turn over 60m in the year to April.

Wants to build 6,000-seat conference centre. Develops property, rents machinery, owns Weston Aerodrome.

Owns 120 acres at Brittas lakes. HSS, one of bigger group companies, turned over 56m in the year to 31 March 2004 and retained profit of 30.9m.