"Definitely not, " replies Roy McCabe, founder of the McCabe pharmacy chain, to the suggestion that sentiment may have influenced his decision to shell out 6.45m in 2001 to buy the 1,300-acre Farnham Estate outside Cavan town, where a Radisson Hotel is about to open.

"The fact that I come from Cavan only means I knew it growing up. I think it would be very dangerous to start letting sentiment rule your pocket."

McCabe's soft spot for the estate is nothing to do with its location. As we tramp around, he points out favourite trees including redwoods that are a legacy of Victorian collectors. He picks wild garlic, admires the abundant rhododendrons and elaborates on the difference between pinemarten and otter droppings. (The otter ones have fish bones. ) Farnham encloses one lake and borders three others. McCabe scrambles into a decrepit boathouse that is a future restoration project. He envisages rowing boats but no speedboats, he says.

They would shatter the peace. He says Farnham's wildlife ranges from buzzards to the bats for which An Taisce insisted on the installation of breeding boxes.

The day he saw the estate, McCabe put in a bid valid for only one day. He reckoned he was getting a good deal. It was afterwards that he decided it needed a hotel to make the economics work.

The first thing that came to mind was health and wellness." He also took into account the modern devotion to the pursuit of pleasure ("not happiness") and increasingly sophisticated Irish tastes.

It's a far cry from the time McCabe quit Cavan for Manchester at age 17 and took a £10 assisted passage to Perth after he married Margaret in 1969. He had done A-levels at night in Manchester, but in Australia worked for a few years in everything from construction to selling furniture. The move into pharmacy was practical.

"I just decided one day I needed to settle down and get a degree, " he says. "I went into a library and got all the career guidance books out and went through a process of elimination."

He knew he wanted something science-led, and something that would enable him to work for himself. "I knew my temperament didn't lend itself to being caught up in a large-scale corporation. I'm quite good at getting things started, but as soon as I do get me the hell out of there. I'm good on concepts but I'm a lousy manager."

Degree completed at 32, he worked for two years to pay off debts, then took off in a camper van around Australia for seven months with his wife and four children, two of whom were threemonth-old twins. He says he came back to Ireland broke.

The initial plan was to settle in a nice country town, but Ireland was too conservative back in the early 1980s. "We felt if we could settle in Dublin you could keep your personal freedom together reasonably well."

McCabe's first pharmacy job was with Hayes Conyngham Robinson, and he was bored witless. "It was so quiet I spent my first day breaking up boxes."

After two years, he opened his first pharmacy with a 23%-interest £20,000 loan from Allied Irish Finance.

"I think the biggest thing I had going for me was was that I said to myself I'll work as hard here as I would have had to in Australia, " he says. "The whole business atmosphere here was so relaxed. Everyone closed for lunch, there was no late night opening. I started doing seven days myself and 12-hour shifts. My wife worked for the first year until we could afford to hire staff."

Customer service was the core of his business "before it became fashionable", he says. Something worked, as the business turns over 50m now. Don't expect it to show profits, as McCabe's aim is always a zero profit. "What's the point?"

The family never lived a flamboyant lifestyle, he says. "We've always reinvested. Profits were always ploughed back into doing something new. Even now I don't live a very flamboyant life. I like Guinness and go out for meals a few times a week." They had big offers for the business, but what would they do instead? They could never be tax exiles.

"If you have enough money, why can't you live where you want?" he says. Anyway, pharmacy was the business they knew.

Now 61, McCabe stepped back when he was 54, and when his eldest daughter Sharon was 28, though he has continued his tradition of working on Christmas Day. Three of his four daughters work in the business. "If I had held back for 15 years, there was no point in expecting Sharon to take an interest at that stage, " he says. "A lot of family businesses have made that mistake. They haven't pulled back and let the next generation have free rein."

Though he is out of the day-to-day graft, his advice is asked, he says. And he still has strong views on the industry.

He is all for more competition but believes the biggest issue to be addressed is a lack of regulation on the ethical side. "I can't be struck off the register no matter what I do."

He was still a bit young to retire when he handed over the pharmacy business, he says. "I'm not the sort of person who could go sit on a beach in Portugal and play golf all day." The Farnham opportunity came up shortly after he had a bypass. "I'm turned on by a challenge. If someone tells me I can't do something I'll say 'I'll show you'. Fixing this up is going to give me much more of a buzz than sitting in Quinto do Lago."

The best thing about having money is that he can go ahead with new projects, he says. Freedom is a big theme for him. "You're better off to have a choice to screw up or do it right. I came from a generation where there was no choice.

Cavan was a grim place in the 1960s and Manchester was just as grim. It was only when I got to Australia that the world opened up for me."

McCabe says he knew enough about himself to know he wasn't going to like running a hotel, so he had to find an operator, and Radisson was prepared to be flexible in its design requirements. "I met Radisson on a Good Friday in Brussels three years ago. I got a contact number and rang them up and they said they had enough Radissons here but if I was interested in a Park Inn they would talk. You have to get in the door don't you?"

He wanted the hotel to complement the 400-year-old estate. "A lot of Irish hotels are owned by builders and you can tell by looking at them because they are construction-led, not market-led, " he says. Four-star was chosen because he says he would be "surprised" if any fivestar in Ireland is making money.

In any case, more relaxed four-star service levels suited his idea of what Farnham should be, he says, and fourstar is an attraction for corporate business. "Many corporate, particularly pharmaceutical corporate, can't entertain in five-star any more."

Last weekend the hotel opened to the public. The occasion went with a swing, McCabe says, and aroused a lot of local curiosity. "We turned away thousands of people who wanted to come in for a look." Sixty-four weddings are booked for this year, and most Fridays and Saturdays next year are booked.

With the push on to get finished, there is organised chaos in the air. A wet May delayed landscaping work, so turf sods have been laid in front of the hotel and sprinklers are going furiously to green them. What will be an infinity pool is still full of building equipment. Finished areas are shut off so that they don't get messed up by builders.

McCabe is disappointed he can't get into the cellar bar, so we peer over the boarding. "You know the Merrion Hotel, we have vaulted old ceilings just like it, " he says. He shows off the decor of the hotel rooms, clearly aimed at a stylish, affluent and reasonably youthful market.

"I could show you around and talk about this until 10 o'clock tonight."

To keep the thing ticking over financially, he has planning permission for 62 housing units, and is aiming at the second home market. The plan is that the golf course will be completed this year and ready for limited play by the end of next year. The spa will open in six weeks.

All in all, including the land purchase, Farnham represents an 85m investment, backed by tax-incentivised investors.

The hotel and estate will keep McCabe busy, he says. "I have to get the golf course done. There's the clubhouse to do.

I want to get an equestrian centre in, maybe clay pigeon shooting, and there are four lakes to develop fishing on. I think all my future ideas will be based on Farnham."

He says he can't ever imagine selling.

But he is definitely not sentimental enough not to notice that local land values have been appreciating since he began his project, and that 65 acres down the road just sold for 21m.

"This has to work, we have to get it right, " he says. "There's a lot gone into this thing. Without the pharmacies, I couldn't have done it."

CURRICULUM VITAE ROY MCCABE

Newsworthiness: McCabe is about to open a Radisson resort on his 1,300-acre Farnham Estate in Cavan Personal: Age 61, married to Margaret with three daughters. Eldest daughter Sharon heads up McCabe's Pharmacy Group, the business he founded in 1981.

Career: Qualified as a pharmacist in Australia at age 32, after going to Perth on a £10 passage from Manchester. Founded McCabe's Pharmacy in 1981. Stepped back six years ago.

MCCABE'S PHARMACY

Turnover of 50m, wholly family-owned, 17 pharmacies in Dublin, Limerick, Drogheda and Dundalk.

FARNHAM DEMESNE

McCabe bought the estate for 6.45m in 2001 after he handed the pharmacy business over to his daughters. About 85m is being ploughed into a hotel, spa and golf course. A four-star Radisson resort will open this month. "It was a challenge and I'm turned on by a challenge, " McCabe says.