My father was in the bank - the Munster and Leinster - so, we moved all over. I started at Firhouse National School, Co Dublin, at the time a tiny, four-teacher, country school.

Every summer, from the time I was a very small kid, I spent a month with my uncle in Co Cavan, a vet in the James Herriott mould. I used to go out on his calls and, when other four or five-year-olds wanted to be firemen, I was mad to be a vet.

When I was nine, my father was transferred to Northern Ireland and I moved to Abbey CBS in Newry. He had been a great Gaelic footballer for Cavan. It was assumed the ability was genetic and I was expected to be a star footballer, but I never shone at the game.

Three years later, my father was transferred to Strabane and I used to travel by bus every day to school in Omagh. For the first time, I became aware of the religious divide.

The rivers around Strabane - the Finn and the Derg - were great for fishing. When I was 14 I became a local hero for a time when I caught the heaviest salmon of the year, a 17-and-a-half pounder. When my father was transferred to Co Dublin, first to Rush and then to Balbriggan, it was decided that I would stay on in the North to complete my education. I spent a year as a boarder at St Patrick's College, Armagh. It was fantastic and I made great friends.

I had the attention span of a five-year-old but knew I had to perform if I wanted to get into vet college. At boarding school, I had nothing else to do but study - up to that I had winged it.

I started in UCD in 1974. Because the vet college was in Ballsbridge, we were cut off from the rest of the college. There were only six girls in the class - it was like being back at a boys' boarding school. The camaraderie and the craic were unreal. The emphasis was on horses and cattle - admitting you were interested in small animals was like admitting you were gay.

My memories of the college are ones of pure happiness. I played rugby for the first time and I competed abroad on the Irish universities show-jumping team.

After graduation, I went to work with my uncle, but I wanted to travel and I moved to Waterford, Kilkenny and later England, where I worked with horses. My desire to work in a developing country was thwarted when I discovered it was doctors they needed rather than vets. I decided to train as a medic and enrolled at the RCSI.

During the summers I worked in vet practices all over Ireland. I qualified at Surgeons in 1986 and moved to Drogheda to work in the Medical Missionaries' hospital. Many of the doctors had worked abroad and they ensured I had the skills to run a bush hospital, which I did for two years in Tanzania. The people were wonderful. They had a saying "I have enough" - it's something I've never heard people in the west saying.

Back in Britain with no speciality, I decided to opt for zoonosis - a branch of medicine which looks at the spread of disease from animals to humans. I got on a training programme on epidemiology and public health medicine and did a master's in infectious diseases.

I was working for the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in London when the job in the Food Safety Authority came up. Everything I have done has lead to what I am doing today, but I didn't map out a career. I've enjoyed all my jobs and have given them all, 100 per cent of my commitment and effort.

Dr Patrick Wall, chief executive of the Food Safety Authority, was in conversation with Yvonne Healy.