JOHN DUNNE isn't your average business cheerleader. The wiry chief of the nation's chambers of commerce started working when he was 16 and spent most of his career in the secular priesthood of the civil service before beginning his ministry for the private sector.

You'd expect him to be more cautious than even your average Ibec type as a result.

Instead, the 51-year-old with an alphabet soup of letters after his name is developing a decidedly unpriestly penchant for provocation.

Earlier this year he broke a taboo by being the first mainstream voice in Irish business to allow the words "carbon tax" to escape his lips, without spitting afterwards. Dunne is quick to explain that he wasn't actually saying Ireland should go that way.

"People recognised that we were not calling for a carbon tax, " says Dunne. He made the point that he didn't believe politicians could be trusted not to turn a carbon tax into a bonanza for raising revenue in a new way. A 'shadow' carbon tax should be put in place, Dunne said, to show how such a model of assessing tax would actually work and whether it wouldn't be a back door to raising taxes.

All of which makes perfect sense. But in a sense Dunne was answering a question no one had asked. He might be pre-empting a policy choice that was on the cards anyway, helping to shape the framework of a future debate on the subject. But now the idea is out there in a way it was not before Dunne raised it.

Dunne worked his way up through the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy and the Department of Foreign Affairs, becoming the private secretary at one point to the minister. It's possible he could have become a career diplomat or gone on to join the Irish contingent in UN circles, but the sudden death of his father brought him back home.

He left the civil service and in 1990 began working in the voluntary sector as the chief J executive of the National Youth Federation.

Eight years later he joined the South Dublin Chamber and in 2001 became Chambers Ireland chief executive.

Last week Dunne unveiled a Chambers Ireland 'election manifesto' that doesn't, at first glance, seem designed to win someone a marginal seat in Dublin North Central. Chambers Ireland would like to extend the school day by one hour, something unlikely to win a warm welcome from teachers, never mind students. A transition year student in the Sunday Tribune office on work experience turned a shade of green at overhearing me repeat the suggestion. The colour returned to her cheeks only when we assured her that the proposal was directed at primary schools.

"The logic behind lengthening the school day is clear, " says Dunne. "There is an everbroader curriculum. In order to fit these subjects into the time allotted, the content of other courses is being reduced, particularly maths. We're seeing the consequences right through to third-level, where even good students are finding it difficult to cope with mathematical requirements. Of course teachers should be paid for this. But we have to recognise that our schoolday is low by international standards."

The manifesto also argues that more of us should be paying tax.

"We're in favour of a low-tax economy, " says Dunne. "We'd like the tax base broadly and equitably distributed. In the last budget nearly 40% pay no income tax at all."

He argues that "it's simply bad for democracy" if such a large percentage of voters can make decisions seemingly secure in the knowledge that they can vote themselves more benefits without paying for them. There is a double irony in that circumstance, however. First is that there is no escaping taxes.

"It is naive to suggest that because they're not paying income tax they're not paying taxes. They pay indirect taxes, " like bin charges, VAT and fees to local authorities. The second irony is that, far from being progressive, indirect taxes almost work out to the disadvantage of those on lower incomes.

Dunne argues that the rule of thumb on taxes ought to be that one-third of taxpayers pay no income tax, one-third pay the standard rate and one-third the higher rate.

In a week that saw hundreds of Irish manufacturing jobs evaporate at Procter & Gamble, Thomson Scientific and on Friday an outsourcing firm in Blanchardstown, plus the confirmation that 330 jobs at Motorola in Cork were to go, Dunne is characteristically unblinking about the grim reality. Is Irish manufacturing dead?

"Manufacturing is challenged, " says Dunne.

"We can survive at the highest end of high-tech manufacturing, biotech and food research."

He points to the extensive investments at the biopharma campus of Wyeth in Dublin and the semiconductor plants at Intel in Leixlip.

The Intel plant is one of only three in the world that can produce the company's latest chips. For manufacturing to survive, Dunne says it will have to be manufacturing at that very highest level.

The government is pinning its hopes on developing Ireland as a top-of-the-value-chain centre for research and development (R&D).

While Ireland has succeeded in creating a favourable environment for companies to domicile their intellectual property, developing world-class research facilities will take a generation. To which point Dunne stresses that, "when we talk about R&D, our niche will be on the development side".

In the end, however, Dunne makes a prediction that will either inspire people to action or cause officials at the IDA and in Miche�l Martin's department to curl up in the foetal position: "In the end we can anticipate that foreign investment will trickle away."

This doesn't have to mean a return to the 1980s, however, if enough Irish companies learn to become global competitors.

"We need to be a leader in internationally traded services, " he says. "Indigenous services, niche manufacturing; we have to better take on the world." If there is a model that Dunne sees as closest to what Ireland needs to become, it is Singapore, he says.

"The resources are there at the minute. We have the confidence, the ability, the credibility to make this jump. We recognise that our existing businesses need to move to high performance growth."

With Chambers Ireland membership overwhelmingly made up of small and medium enterprises, he sees a need for many of those firms to undergo a transformation. No longer will 'lifestyle' businesses that aren't totally focused on growth be enough to sustain the economy for future generations, he says.

We've already seen productivity growth drive the Irish economy, Dunne says, and not just because of the greater use of computers and more deployed capital. It's ultimately because, quite simply, we work longer and harder than we ever did before. "Examine your conscience, " Dunne says, fingers steepled.

Six years into his role as chief executive, the 48-year-old is thinking about retirement - he reckons that having worked 80-hour weeks for more than 30 years, he's earned it.

He's been asked to consider running for office. He dismisses the notion - "I'm an ideas man, not a people person" - but if he ever changes his mind the country would likely find in him a straight-talker unlike anyone they've seen in politics before.

CV JOHN DUNNE
Age: 48
Family: Married to Maria with two children, James and Emer
Education: BSc (Public Administration), MBA, Dip Pol Eval, MMII, MIITD
Career: September 2001-present, chief executive Chambers Ireland; 1998-2001 chief executive, South Dublin Chamber; 1990-1998 chief executive, National Youth Federation; 1980-1990 Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy; Department of Foreign Affairs; secondment to Institute of Public Affairs