I have been involved in selling AIB and Ireland Inc for the last seven to eight years and I'm certain I could add value

He talks more like a businessman than a banker. He is more adventurous than cautious. He sees other people's points of view and seems strangely unopinionated. He is positive, but not pushy.

Mr Jerry McCrohan has just become president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, representing some 350 members of the chamber, who are drawn from the 560 US companies which have located here.

Mr McCrohan is head of international corporate banking with AIB Bank and recently has taken on the same portfolio with AIB Bank's IFSC operation, an enhancement of his job, which means, he says diffidently, that he may get to spend more time in Ireland than he does at present.

And if his breadth of vision, his track record of international and national banking and industry experience and his commitment to infrastructural and industrial development in this State are any indicators, the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland is in for an interesting year.

He says he took on the job because he was asked to: one gets the impression that this career banker from Ballymun in Dublin, who started as a clerk in the Santry branch after the Leaving Certificate in Beneavin College in Finglas, and went on to college "the hard way", has a wide appreciation of what he can achieve in a short span, in co-operation with the Government and State agencies.

"It doesn't come with having chains of office or things like that. It's a very active, action-oriented organisation. I have been involved in selling AIB and Ireland Inc for the last seven to eight years and I'm certain I could add value."

The chamber, he explains, acts "as a conduit between the interests of the foreign direct investors" like Intel, Dell, Gateway and Boston Scientific - at the top of the scale - right down to smaller companies like Group Decco in Ballina, Co Mayo.

Linked into IBEC, it can pass information from and to these companies as well as playing an important role in supporting Government policy on regionalisation - "very necessary because Dublin is all jammed-up; we would be endeavouring to support that" - and monitoring the evolution of EU policy as it pertains to American industries here.

The American Chamber of Commerce has gone out of its way to have board members from right across the State, he says, with regional chambers now in Cork and Galway. He pays credit to the US embassy for its involvement in industrial development. "Mike Sullivan, the ambassador, would have a big focus on the Border counties and the whole concept of getting involvement both sides of the Border. We would be supporting that and getting people on to our council and on to our board from that neck of the woods."

The regional issues, he says, include access to airports, proper infrastructure and motorways to the regions, and broadband capacity for companies locating in the regions.

What he would like to see happening during his year in office? "I won't be able to influence this - I will, to a degree I suppose - is the serious development of public/private partnerships to accelerate the Government's National Development Plan."

This concept, he believes, causes a "road block" for many people.

"We need to get the PPP [Public Private Partnership] initiative moving. I think we will be saying that every time we can if we are to build infrastructure to support the regional policy. Otherwise, guys aren't going to go to Letterkenny or Mayo or wherever," he says.

He acknowledges the Government is working on the broadband issue. Companies, he says, require huge data transfer capability and we are going to have to get as far ahead as possible to meet the requirements, particularly for the back office support companies.

Mr McCrohan's involvement with the United States began in 1972 when he first went on holidays there. Between 60 and 70 per cent of AIB's inward investment portfolio now is from the US. "I have always been interested in overseas investment. I started off being involved in the small and medium-sized industries. Then I worked for the IDA for a while in the small industries division. It was only natural that I would have glided into this area."

After completing his secondment to the IDA in 1980, he moved to AIB's New York operation. "I love New York but after four to five days, I love to leave. I love arriving in New York. The other place I like is San Francisco because . . . I don't know . . . I don't like LA. I would live in Boston if I was going to live anywhere in the States," he says emphatically.

He has been to most states. "If there is an American company in Ireland, I will have been to their headquarters, 95 per cent, anyway."

George Mitchell, he says, is the American he admires most. "I think he is such a self-effacing man and yet so effective, and the effort he has put into Ireland for no gain . . . he has been absolutely incredible. He is an incredible, genuine, ordinary person. He could be talking to anybody. He talks about issues as issues, doesn't give judgments, one way or the other."

Mr McCrohan says his own philosophy of business is partnership. "Whether with small or medium enterprises or international clients, the only way to work is in partnership and to try to achieve a win/win situation. We would have fostered that in here (AIB) by pushing very hard on this concept of relationship banking where people or individual managers would have responsibility solely for a client in every way, whether it's a cheque book in Letterkenny or a corporate requirement here.

"My central business philosophy: you have to be ahead on service and all the time watching out to add value for a client. They will react positively and issues that arise won't be major, will only be minor irritants and won't cause terminal damage."

Business is listed as Jerry McCrohan's first interest, followed by sailing and travel. He lives in Howth, Co Dublin, and is a member of Howth Yacht Club. "I have a motor cruiser, not a yacht, but I'm very interested in boats. I mess around on boats, either there or on Valentia Island, which is my really favourite place."

He loves travel, though, and apart from work, has been to China three times, Kenya twice and Italy regularly. His wife Kay is "mad on Valentia Island".

His sons Conor (15) and Ronan (13) still holiday with them. "They want to go on their terms, wherever we're going," he confesses. But he adds quickly: "Travel is better than university." He will encourage his boys to travel "so long as they then come back and go to college. There is an inherent danger for some of them that they would miss the college side of things."

He is relieved that the pressure is coming off young people to get a safe pensionable job, in something like insurance . . . or, indeed, banking.

"They have much greater fluidity in moving around, tremendous self-confidence. That is the way it should be. Even the people who come into the bank, they don't come in for life ..." And he adds that American companies coming into Ireland have had no small impact on new employer/ employee attitudes in this regard.