On the benefactor:Denis O'Brien's offer to pay half the annual salary of Giovanni Trapattoni for two years marks a deeply populist streak in the businessman, whose success in the commercial arena has enabled him to build a fortune worth more than €1 billion.
Chairman of the Special Olympics world summer games held in Ireland five years ago, O'Brien has a big interest in sport and plenty of cash at his disposal.
He has made grand gestures before - buying up part of Aer Lingus to help the campaign to prevent a takeover of the airline by Ryanair - but his decision to sign Trapattoni's pay cheques seems likely to become the stuff of Irish sporting legend.
Some wealthy business people make private or prominent donations to universities and other noble causes. Others buy up soccer or other sporting clubs or sponsor them because of their interest in the sport itself. O'Brien's payment of half Trapattoni's wage is in a different league altogether.
With luck, it might just help restore the fortunes of a national soccer team whose lustre has dimmed badly in recent years.
Never one to baulk at a dramatic manoeuvre, O'Brien approached the FAI chief executive, John Delaney, in a personal capacity in November with an offer of help to enable the body appoint a world-class manager. Delaney accepted the offer, which both sides say came with no conditions attached.
"This has nothing to do with business. It's motivated by his interest in Irish sport," a spokesman for O'Brien said last night. The businessman himself told RTÉ radio he had "googled" Trapattoni and found him to be a terrific manager.
O'Brien's business activities are characterised by a deeper level of research. Doggedly ambitious, he made his first fortune in 2000 when he sold Esat Telecom to BT for €1.9 billion at the very height of the technology boom. He personally realised €231 million from that deal.
Esat's hefty valuation was helped by the fact the company had won the competition for the State's second mobile phone licence in 1995. That award has been investigated at length for many years by the Moriarty Tribunal, although it has yet to publish any findings on the matter. O'Brien has denied any wrongdoing.
O'Brien's second fortune is of more recent vintage and of vaster scale. He used some of the Esat money to develop from scratch a mobile phone business called Digicel in the Caribbean and realised no less than $800 million (then €603.8 million) a year ago when he refinanced the business.
Some of that money has been used to build up a major stake in Independent News & Media.
O'Brien has used that position to question the leadership and strategy of the company's chief executive, Tony O'Reilly.
O'Reilly is resisting strongly, but the skirmishing seems likely to culminate in an all-out takeover battle for the company.
O'Brien also bought out Today FM last year, adding to a radio empire that includes 98FM in Dublin and NewsTalk.
He's a busy man.
