I am not sure which impinges first, his resonant voice, his height or his charm. Perhaps all three together. Despite turning 69 this month, he remains an imposing figure. The Georgian elegance of his Dublin drawing-room mirrors his own sartorial style.

A battle-hardened strategist of boardrooms and stock exchanges, Dr AJF became Sir Anthony when the British establishment bestowed a knighthood in recognition of his work on behalf of and as founder of the Ireland Funds. This charitable body, now operating in 14 countries throughout the world, has raised over $200 million for programmes encouraging peace and reconciliation on the island of Ireland. Holding dual Irish and British citizenship, he is well placed to promote dialogue, although in his view, Europe is where our cultural affinities lie and is the natural conduit for our loyalties and aspirations.

Still revelling in Belvedere's historic double victory in schools rugby in March, he is philosophical about the importance of the "Cups" in the lives of these young students. "Any game played in school is a great template for life in that it teaches you about teamwork, training, effort, reward, relying on your friends, courage and in Kipling's words 'to meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two impostors just the same'."

Much has been written over the years about Tony O'Reilly's rugby talents, but it is still rather startling to think that at just 18 he was called up to the Irish team on 22 January 1955. That same year he was selected for the Lions' tour of South Africa. In fact he holds the Lions' records for the most capped winger (10 tests) and the highest try-scorer (38) in South Africa and New Zealand. Then there were his 29 caps for Ireland.

"I remember going on tour for almost six months in 1955, which is quite a lot of time away from home at that age, and I read the entire works of Somerset Maugham. Suddenly I realised there was a whole world out there which was unexplored and which I could, by buying a book, learn about." His successes on the rugby pitch were matched by his academic record in UCD and the Incorporated Law Society, where he obtained a top place in his law finals. He added to this later when he earned a doctorate from Bradford University on agricultural marketing.

Discussing the aggressive commercialism now driving world sport, he says, "It is clear rugby has become a much more professional game than it was in my time. The whole Corinthian aspect of sport for sport's sake has changed. Modern rugby is gladiatorial- and therefore encourages the hyping of all sorts of things, such as media attention, as well as excessive deification of the individual or the team in a way which is unrealistic and unsustainable."

Since he became Chairman of Independent News & Media, the Group has expanded since the late 1980s from publishing the Irish Independent and a number of provincial papers in Ireland to six other countries, including the UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He is proud of the fact that ten of IN&M's 14 South African titles now have black editors. "Advertising is the life blood of our business", he admits, adding that without advertising "you're not in business. Unlike television, newspapers are about local brands. We have got papers in six countries but you can't give the New Zealand Herald away in Skibbereen or the Skibbereen Eagle away in Westport."

Criticising "the progressive deterioration in aspects of media coverage", Sir Anthony suggests it has been "brought about by a free for-all. Are we the better for no censorship whatsoever? There are medical studies, recently published in the Lancet, which suggest that many of the images we see in games, on television and particularly in films containing violence and cruelty, are having a deleterious effect on people generally, not just the youth. I think that leads to a deterioration in the quality of our notion of justice and decency and all the things we consider good."

"In my day you grew up gradually. Profound chemical changes were taking place in your body but you were allowed gradually to assume manhood. Today young men and women are almost force-fed - they are like mushrooms. The knowledge that a 10-yearold has of everything from entertainment to sex to holidays was not available to us even as 18-year-olds."

Then there is the prevailing cult of beauty promoted by the media which assails young people daily, compounding their sense of inadequacy: "They pick up a magazine and it is filled with people who look more shapely than they do, are more beautiful than they are, are having a better time than they are and they wonder what the hell am I doing here? I think that focus on physical beauty and youth must be dispiriting to a lot of people. That's the negative side of the media.

"In many ways, I think religion is regarded now as old-fashioned, which I find a bit horrifying because the older I get, the more I realise the importance of religion as a central compass in your life."

Appointed as a trustee of the esteemed English Catholic weekly, The Tablet, in 1979, he still holds that position. He says he subscribes to the publication's objectives, which include "advancing the Christian religion, disseminating the teachings of the Catholic Church and advancing the education of the public."

Other trustees of The Tablet include the Duke of Norfolk and prior to his death, the writer, Graham Greene. It is the former who elicits Sir Anthony's interest. "I think the Duke of Norfolk, as Earl Marshal of England is fascinating, because as both Earl Marshal and a Roman Catholic, he is therefore, the Chief Administrator of all royal occasions. So, historically, at a time when Catholics were not meant to go to Protestant ceremonies, the Duke of Norfolk was actually organizing these Protestant ceremonies!"

But there is a perception that as Catholics can't accede to the British throne, nor can a British monarch be married to a Catholic, the faith remains very much out in the cold where British royalty is concerned. However, he rejects this as too narrow and out of date. "I don't think it would be an issue if it was put to an acid test. If there was a person who said 'I am the King or Queen of England and I want to marry or become a Catholic', it wouldn't suggest the kind of treason it would have suggested 400 years ago. But in those days the papacy was a temporal power and it wasn't until 1860, with Garibaldi achieving power in Italy, that the papacy abandoned its temporality and became a spiritual guardian of the world's Catholics. I think in that moment, the Catholic Church truly purchased its freedom - by not having to have armies and not having to be concerned about temporal matters."

More controversially, he believes that the Church "will eventually embrace married priests and women priests. I just can't understand why the Church hasn't embraced women priests as it is, when you look at the vocational pattern in this country and others - I believe there have been very few potential Jesuits enter the novitiate over the last five to ten years. The Church cannot exist without women priests and I might add that in many instances women are extremely well equipped to be priests."

Asked about the need for the Catholic press to re-discover its confidence and a voice in today's market, instead of skulking on the sidelines, he suggests that the recent scandals have set the Church "back on its heels and have in many ways reduced the prestige of priests and bishops to a level which is utterly undeserved".

"I went through my entire schooling in Belvedere and I never heard of a single case of sex abuse and I never heard any of my companions talk about it. So I have to say that it was probably in special enclosed situations like orphanages or reformatory schools, but certainly in day schools it was not something that I was aware of. I heard about it for the first time much later in life.

"The inevitable effect has been to impoverish and indeed paralyse the Church in parts of America, where people are litigious beyond description and where many lawyers are ambulance chasers and have gone after the church in a big way. In Ireland priests must have found it extremely upsetting being tarred with a global brush. I have a cousin a priest who is a most holy and learned .man - I admire him greatly. I have discussed this with him and it seems to me that the prestige of the Church and the confidence with which it addresses issues in society has been affected more than it should have been by this. I believe there is a very strong case for a counter attack. Lay people should get up in a pulpit, where appropriate, and say, like I have said, that they never had any knowledge or experience of it (sexual abuse) in their school life."

One of the issues on which the Catholic Church in Britain, through Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, has recently given a lead, has been abortion. Sir Anthony says "I think that the authority with which he and Archbishop Rowan Williams have addressed the whole issue of abortion in this current election is an extremely telling example of the power of all the Churches to amend the public agenda!"

He believes another significant area where the Church can give a lead today is in creating a space for dialogue with the Muslim community. It is known that he has raised this with The Tablet with a view to The (London) Independent hosting a conference on whether Islam can co-exist with democracy. "If you accept Islam as the Wahabi version, then it is not possible to have democracy.  But the majority of moderate Muslims are being confused in the public mind with the philosophy of a small group of what I would consider fanatics. Recently in London, I read the memorial at a service for the writer Anthony Sampson. Fifty years ago, he wrote a book called The Anatomy of Britain which attempted to decode the patterns of power in Great Britain. In his final book, published just before his death and titled, Who Runs This Place?, he identifies the extraordinary demographic changes in the UK and the fact that they need to find an accommodation with the Koranic faith, if they are to preserve the fabric of the nation."

Discussing the changing pace of life in Ireland in 2005 sparks a flood of reminiscences of his early life in business in the 1960s. He suggests that with Seán Lemass at the helm there was "a great sense that Ireland was going about its business".

"At 25, I became CEO of An Bord Báinne. Sean Lemass was Taoiseach with a very exciting cabinet of young people like Donagh O'Malley, Charlie Haughey, George Colley and Brian Lenihan. The Opposition included Noel Browne, Brendan Corish, Declan Costello, Garret FitzGerald and of course the most towering figure of all, the civil servant, Dr Ken Whittaker, whose seminal work, The First Programme for Economic Expansion, laid the groundwork for all the Celtic Tiger has achieved. In 1959, Harold Macmillan had just won the election in Britain on the slogan 'you've never had it so good'. Around 1956, Ireland repealed the Control of Manufacturers Act, (which required 51% Irish-ownership of start up businesses. It was economic Sinn Féinism.) They tore that Act up, started the IDA, expanded horizons and the caravan began to roll."

Describing it as "an exciting time" to have been young, he says the main difference between the Celtic Tiger and the 1960s is emigration. "I would say there are as many people dissatisfied today as there were in 1960; the problem with the 1960s was that a great number of people had to go abroad.  In my year in college - I graduated in 1958 - 86% of my class migrated abroad. Now it is voluntary, if you migrate it is because you want to."

Musing on what it means to be young, he suggests, "Being young means being uncluttered in your mind. You feel you can take on the world and you really have no sense of time or mortality. At that age you just don't think of death, you are just excited about being alive. That changes. Do I regret it? - no! I have become a more concerned person as I have got older and had the love of children and grandchildren. There is a poem called If by Rudyard Kipling which my father gave me and it is such a great poem as a life message - a reminder of the frailty of life and of the opportunities of life, the joy of life and the disappointments of life."