His silky voice stays in your head long after the advert ends. "Liberty Insurance -insurance the way it should be" intones Brian De Silva huskily, and hearts around the country flutter.

Many of us can recite the ad by heart. The piece de resistance of a two-year public relations offensive, it has helped to turn Liberty from a virtual unknown into one of the country's most recognisable brands. Market research, the company says, shows that three-quarters of Irish consumers now know who Liberty is. It has done what some thought impossible - successfully overcome one of the biggest marketing challenges Ireland has ever seen, turning itself from "the bad guy who bought Quinn for a song" into a friendly American brand we trust our money with.

We are beginning to forget it, but the anger and scrutiny that surrounded the collapse of Quinn Insurance and the fortune it cost taxpayers was fierce. When Liberty bought the company in 2011, it decided not just to let this sentiment fade over time but to tackle it head on, with a frankly breathtaking marketing campaign.

It has thrown "a minimum" of €10m at some of the biggest sponsorship gigs in the country over the last two years, including The Late Late Show and the All-Ireland hurling championship. A Boston-themed television and radio ad featuring Mr De Silva, espousing Liberty's financial stability and long history, aired left, right and centre. It has since been nominated for several advertising awards. Marketers speak of Liberty in hushed tones as the holy grail, one of the top 10 sponsorship spenders in the country, with pockets are as deep as Mr De Silva's voice is silky.

But while he might be the face and voice of it all, de Silva is certainly not the brains. That mantle belongs to Pat O'Brien, an unassuming GAA nut from Drumcondra. He is Liberty Insurance's chief executive and the man who first identified Quinn as a takeover opportunity when the Cavan company was put into administration in 2010.

We meet over coffee at a cosy corporate box in an eerily empty Croke Park, where O'Brien will gather with 80,000 sports fans days later at the All-Ireland hurling final that Liberty, alongside Gulf airline Etihad and convenience chain Centra, is the title sponsor of.

As a life-long GAA fan, he's counting down the days - though he's reeling from the Dublin football team's loss to a ferocious Donegal days before.

He's very proud, he says, that Liberty sponsors hurling and camogie. His two boys are GAA nuts too - it must be pretty special for them to see dad's firm plastered around the stands of Croker.

It's been a tumultuous few years for the trained accountant, who spends most of his time at the company's head office in Blanchardstown.

After what he describes as a "highly competitive" bidding race, Liberty bought Quinn in 2011 in a joint venture with Anglo, now IBRC. It would have snapped up the entire thing in one go but Anglo's bargaining power, accrued through terms and conditions attached to years worth of loans, made it indispensable.

The joint venture, designed to last for about five years, did not survive long. Liberty acquired the remaining 49pc stake in December after the surprise announcement of IBRC's liquidation.

Some speculate that this liquidation and the resulting rushed sale of IBRC's stake in the business played out very well for Liberty, and less so for taxpayers. If IBRC had held on to the stake for longer, it would have undoubtedly increased in value.

But while lots of figures have been bandied about - a sale price of as low as €1 was reported at one point - the purchase price was no song. The total cost was about €250m.

So how does a man who has to find a return on a quarter of a billion, an investment he was largely responsible for in the first place, sleep at night? Quite well, says the affable O'Brien.

He started his career, like so many chief executives, as a chartered accountant. He trained with Deloitte, moving to Bermuda soon after qualifying to work in its insurance advisory division.

He moved back to Ireland to work for Liberty International Underwriters in 1999, after marrying his Kerry-born sweetheart, also an accountant. The company had just four people on the ground at that point. He transferred over to the UK to manage the business there and was still in Britain when Quinn went under and a big opportunity suddenly presented itself.

"We already knew we wanted to move into Ireland before Quinn happened," he explains. "We had large operations across Europe, but not in Ireland. It just made sense."

It was a long, complicated process, he says. Forty different players initially expressed interest in Quinn Insurance. The sale took 18 months to close including a drawn-out due diligence process, after which he was invited to move to Ireland to head it all up. Large and complex court proceedings were also thrown into the mix..

But now the dust has settled and one of the country's biggest private employers is still standing. Some 1,000 people work for Liberty Insurance and another 500 will work for its IT division once a current round of recruitment closes.

A comparable insurer, AIG, employs just 160 in its insurance division. Liberty promised there would be no redundancies when it first bought Quinn - but how on earth is that sustainable when its competitors offer the same thing with fewer people?

"We have a big workforce" concedes O'Brien. "The best way to protect it is to build a bigger business, but we will only do that in a sustainable and measured way."

"We haven't ruled out redundancies and we carried out some in 2012."

The vast majority of Quinn workers, however, have kept their jobs. It was estimated that numbers would have been slashed to around 300 if a wealthy buyer was not found.

Perhaps this is why Liberty has enjoyed a relatively pain-free relationship with a community that has responded to other players in the Quinn drama with vitriol. Around 70 attacks have been carried out at former Quinn companies, including a home-made car bomb being driven into a building full of workers.

A merger between Northern Irish building materials supplier Lagan Cement and a Quinn company collapsed after a Lagan executive was sent a bullet in the post.

Liberty, O'Brien says, has not experienced anything like that. "Everybody in Cavan and around the country has been very welcoming, we have been welcomed with open arms."

"It was definitely a concern when the deal was closing, given what was being reported in the media at that time, but we have had no problems."

It is now firmly in expansion mode. As well as recruiting 150 new staff for its IT division, it is building up an actuarial team, a notoriously high paid career.

Gobsmackingly for an insurance company, Quinn had no actuaries.

But while promising young actuaries might be rubbing their hands with glee, young drivers have less to celebrate. Quinn's super-cheap policies are now firmly a thing of the past. Its quotes always seemed at least €50 cheaper than its nearest competitor; my very first car insurance policy, at the grand old age of 20, was relatively painless thanks to Quinn. Under Liberty, it is a little bit sorer.

"Our strategy is very different. Quinn was slightly niche - it had lots of young drivers and high-hazard industries like construction on its books. We will still insure young drivers but we are taking a mass- market approach, providing something for everyone now."

"Our brand is about quality, not the cheapest price. It is crucial that consumers realise insurance is about more than just price. Think about it -we've seen a number of Irish insurers fail recently. What you're getting with Liberty is stability, a huge international conglomerate with billions in reserves that just isn't going to fail."

Liberty is not the only one to say goodbye to cheap motor policies - the industry as a whole has abandoned them. Average premium prices have been rising for the last three years and car insurers still lost €240m in that period. It is a hangover from massive underpricing during the boom, when average policies fell from a peak of €900 to €500 at their lowest. Every insurer will tell you the same - policies were just too cheap.

The resulting jacking up of prices is now slowing, O'Brien says, as cars return to the roads and the worst of the recession lifts. Online policy purchases in particular are booming with people buying insurance on their smartphones - 30pc of all its online sales go through a mobile or tablet. One can only imagine the legibility of the fine print of an insurance policy on a smartphone.

But it is not all rosy. The insurance industry has just endured something of an annus terribilis. First there was the spectacular "accounting irregularity" discovered at RSA Ireland that took the form of a €120m shortfall, prompting its British parent to issue one profit warning after another and start selling off assets around the globe.

Then there was the disastrous collapse of Setanta Insurance, the company which rather ridiculously was founded and regulated in Malta but sold solely into Ireland, and whose shortfall Irish taxpayers have been made accountable for.

On top of all this, 2013 saw some of the worst flooding and storm damage on record, with insurers mostly footing the bill.

Setanta is a particularly interesting case to put to the boss of Liberty. It was recently determined that Ireland will be liable for policies that the Maltese company sold here.

But when Quinn collapsed, we were also made liable for policies sold by Quinn in the UK. Why are we always the ones to foot the bill, I ask?

"From a purely legal perspective, there was no obligation [for Ireland to pay for Quinn's UK business]. It was decided following discussions between the two states that it was the right thing to do."

The UK, he adds, did the same for Ireland when Independent Insurance Company was wound up a decade ago.

Setanta is different, he says. Being regulated in Malta and selling in Ireland is "venue shuffling - not what the legislation intended." He is hesitant to blame the Central Bank - " we now have one of the most complex, onerous regulatory environments in Europe" - but given that cases like Setanta are still happening despite all this onerous regulation, concedes that the system "probably does need to evolve a bit".

But O'Brien's not overly concerned about the regulatory environment, or Setanta, or Quinn for that matter. The image he conveys is that of a man consumed with growing a business. While Quinn eschewed brokers, Liberty sees them as a important source of business. It has also just bought an insurance firm in the North that has catapulted it into the region's top three.

"My job is to get this right and turn things around, which should take about five years from start to finish.

"Sean Quinn in the news doesn't bother us. We're not drawn into it any more".

'I RUN REGULARLY - IT CLEARS MY HEAD'

Describe yourself: "Driven and quite analytical."

From? "Drumcondra in Dublin, living in Rathmines now."

Education? "School at Ard Scoil Ris in Marino, followed by an accounting and finance degree at DCU. I trained as an accountant at Deloitte".

What are you reading? "A hurling book by Damien Lawlor - I read a lots of sports stuff. Before that it was 'An Officer and a Gentleman' by Robert Harris."

What was your last holiday? "I went to Austria with my family, staying just outside San Johann. We went paragliding and white water-rafting, which was spectacular."

What do you do in your spare time? "I'm sports mad. I run three or four times a week, it helps to clear my head. My passion is GAA. My kids play for St Vincent's in Marino, so I spend a lot of time on the sidelines."

Your last really great meal? "A Chinese chicken dish made by my wife from scratch last week. She's a fantastic cook."

If I wasn't doing this..."I'd quite like Peter McKenna's job. He is the commercial director of Croke Park."

Sunday Indo Business