Smyth arouses strong and often not very sweet emotions. In the course of his profitable career, he has fallen out with a slew of prominent developers including the likes of Liam Carroll, Phil Monahan and Treasury Holdings' Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett.

Famously, he dealt Charlie Haughey the killer blow before the McCracken tribunal by presenting his record of phone contacts with the former taoiseach and giving evidence about meetings with Haughey that he had posted to himself.

In the process, he landed supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne deeper in tribunal soup and earned the enmity of financier Dermot Desmond, who later even opposed golf fanatic Smyth's bid to become captain of the K Club.

On RTE's Liveline radio programme last Monday, Dunne said he considers himself a "friend" and "admirer" of Smyth, despite the fact that Smyth's evidence about Dunne's payments to Haughey before the McCracken tribunal reduced Dunne to tears.

Even so, Dunne said his reaction to the hospital proposal was that he "actually laughed at it."

He finds it "hard to believe", he said, that a consortium including a solicitor, an architect, a builder and a bank would do anything for cost. And if Dunne was on the HSE? "I wouldn't spend a lot of time looking at it."

Dunne is Smyth's best-known legal client. Before Dunne, Galway-born Smyth's highest-profile case had been representing Ansbacher Bank when Banco Ambrosiano sought $40m allegedly lodged in Dublin by banker Roberto Calvi . . . later found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London.

Through Dunne, Smyth leapt into the limelight. The lawyer led Dunne's negotiations with his family after the Orlando balcony-top cocaine and prostitute incident. He was rumoured to have received a success fee of 10m.

The 'big fella' was also instrumental in Smyth's move into the corporate big time. Smyth had got an earlier taste for that world by teaming up with Bord na gCon chairman Paschal Taggart to buy and flip H Williams in 1987. After Dunne's split with his family, Dunne and Smyth bought into property company Dunloe, where Smyth emerged as the controlling shareholder in 1995. He subsequently bought Belfast company Ewart, and acquired a fondness for corporate wheeling and dealing.

In retrospect, Smyth's emergence at the helm of Dunloe Ewart was unsurprising. Smyth was the first high-profile Irish lawyer to make a practice of jumping the fence to get a slice of deals on which he had been hired to advise. There is a frequently repeated observation about Smyth that "you go into his office looking for advice and you come out with a partner".

This style of business has made Smyth rich, enabling him to amass a substantial land bank around Dublin. But it has also knocked many noses out of joint, particularly in the property development world. The Dunloe deal, for example, ticked off developer Phil Monahan, who was also Smyth's client. Smyth later said that Monahan, with whom he also fell out over a property project, was "somewhat miffed" because he believed Smyth should have secured Dunloe for him.

There is a resentment in some quarters at the perception that Smyth built much of his wealth out of his clients' ideas. The juxtaposition of the lawyerturned-property magnate's renowned hard-nosed business style and his famous religious piety is often the cause of acerbic comment.

A daily mass-goer, Smyth organised a nationwide tour of relics of St Therese of Lisieux in 2001, and even commissioned an Aubusson tapestry of the saint from artist Graham Knuttel. Smyth is said to class himself as a man of deep faith rather than particularly religious.

"Maybe his conscience is getting to him, " was one of the printable comments on the hospital proposal offered for the purposes of this profile by one observer who has dealt with Smyth. A declared foe suggested: "You're giving him what he most relishes: column inches. He has an insatiable appetite for self-PR, probably related to his bid for beatification while living."

Such is the strength of Smyth's reputation as a tough operator that even those who have dealt with him amicably say they found themselves suspicious.

"He's extremely able, very articulate, " one says. "He's a guy about whom you'd say: 'How could this guy screw me? He's so refined, so quietly spoken?' But when it comes to what he wants for himself he doesn't take any prisoners."

Smyth's capacity for making enemies has occasionally bitten him in the backside. Dermot Desmond is known to have had reservations about him since the hullabaloo over the Johnston Mooney & O'Brien site back in 1989, when Smyth lodged a bid with Telecom Eireann on behalf of an unknown client who was later revealed to be Desmond. Smyth emerged smelling of roses from the subsequent inquiry.

Nonetheless, Desmond later used Smyth as his personal solicitor when selling NCB Stockbrokers. But what Desmond saw as the Haughey betrayal was a step too far, and would come back to haunt Smyth. In 2002, Desmond joined developer Liam Carroll of Zoe, who had clashed with Smyth for a variety of reasons including a land deal, to stake-build in Dunloe Ewart and oust Smyth from the chairmanship.

The same year, Smyth sold his 27% stake in Dunloe Ewart to Taggart, whom Desmond had brought in to break the impasse, netting Smyth a 32m profit on his original investment. Around that time, Smyth was obliged to withdraw his application for captaincy of the K Club after Desmond objected. He has since bounced back. In 2003, Smyth backed off from a showdown with Treasury Holdings over the latter's quoted REO property vehicle. Also that year, he bought and sold 2% of McInerney.

In the past few years, Smyth has worked with developer Owen O'Callaghan. He has been working on property projects in Britain and Ireland through his Alburn vehicle. Last month, Alburn paid a reported 8.5m for Quinlan's pub in Dublin's Terenure, where the plan is to build apartments.

Smyth has also been having adventures, last year travelling Route 66 on a Harley Davidson with solicitor wife Anne Marie on the back. In his spare time, he is a patron of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He and his wife donated Jack B Yeats's The Traditional Singer to the museum in 2004.

He has done his bit for charity, setting up the 3Ts, Turning the Tide of Suicide, charity. His interest in the children's hospital began in 2002 when Crumlin consultant Bill Casey asked him to help advance plans to redevelop the hospital. It was a cause of interest to Smyth, whose nephew died of leukaemia.

Some believe the hospital proposal really is a piece of altruism. Even Dunne said he believes the consortium may believe that. But, like the pioneers who went to America and ended up shooting the Indians, it just wouldn't work out the way they planned, Dunne forecast. On the other hand, he conceded: "He earned an awful lot of money off me, so maybe he is throwing some of that back."

But the more negative feeling out there is well summed up in the view of another observer. "It is definitely a stroke of some sort. I just don't know what it is."

THE MAN & HIS COMPANY

Noel Smyth

Newsworthiness Part of group proposing to build new children's hospital on a no-profit basis Professional Lawyer turned property tycoon and corporate wheeler dealer
Age 54
Personal Married to Anne Marie, devotee of Saint Therese of Lisieux, keen golfer, art lover, charity supporter Alburn Smyth's property vehicle which would develop the hospital. Through Alburn, Smyth is investing in British and Irish property. Among Alburn's high-pro"le projects is leading the 350m redevelopment of The Square in Tallaght.

Noteworthy developments include apartments at Regency Street, near Buckingham Palace, where Mary McAleese was a buyer.