"When you're in a car and you're listening to something on the radio, and you realise that you don't want to get home until it's finished, " she adds. That's what the talk radio station is aiming for.

As a broadcasting proposition, it's noble.

As a business proposition, it's a big challenge. Contrary to the cliche, talk is not cheap.

The Dublin station has spent 14m and counting over the last four years to battle its way to a 5% share of the radio market in the capital. It has been "a hard lesson" says Geraghty. "You just look at the financials and you'll see that".

Having paid a handsome fee for that education, Newstalk's shareholders are treating themselves to an expensive graduation present. The station, 60% owned by Denis O'Brien's Radio Two Thousand, is prepared to spend another 6m at least over the next three years to apply its hard-won local knowledge on a national scale.

Newstalk has applied to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland for a "quasinational" licence and is the sole applicant for the proposed new service.

The new licence is for a talk radio station covering 80% of the population, including Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford cities, and much of the rest of the Republic. Effectively it will give the winning broadcaster the opportunity to set up a commercially-funded rival to RTE Radio 1.

Just six months with the station after taking over from former boss, Dan Healy, Geraghty is the woman spearheading the bid.

It has been a hectic half year as she has taken up the responsibility of steering Newstalk to profitability in Dublin . . . still very much a work in progress . . . while coordinating plans to go national. There hasn't been much time for anything else.

Asked if she has any hobbies outside the radio business, Geraghty smiles and says: "When do I get outside radio?"

As a former radio presenter and producer, she admits to spending a lot of time listening in on programmes even on those comparatively rare occasions when she does get away from the affairs of the station.

"I think if you come from behind the mic you're constantly in that mode, " she says. In fact, it takes a conscious effort not to listen in.

"I try not to listen to the radio", she says, "but I can't help it".

The Newstalk chief executive also functions as the station's chief evangelist, rarely missing an opportunity to sing the station's praises. One minute she is endorsing the station's flagship presenters Eamon Dunphy and George Hook.

In the next breath she points out that Newstalk can lay claim to the nation's speech broadcaster of the year in Orla Barry, a recent award winner at the BCIbacked Phonographic Performance Ireland awards.

Suffice it to say, Geraghty is in no doubt that the Newstalk product is worthy of a national stage.

The quasi-national licence is, arguably, Newstalk's to lose. It is the only applicant, it has a track record in talk radio and, as the story to date has shown, it has the support of investors with deep pockets who genuinely appear to be committed to the project for the long haul.

That should all play well with the BCI, but Geraghty is taking nothing for granted and prefaces an outline of what Newstalk plans to do, if successful, with the caveat that "nothing here has been won".

There is also a complicating factor with the licence bid: Newstalk has not made clear in its application what it intends to do with the Dublin talk radio licence that it currently holds.

If it wins the quasi-national licence, it may have to hand back the Dublin one, which BCI could then put out to tender again.

Geraghty says the matter would have to be thrashed out with the BCI "if and when" Newstalk is awarded the licence.

If it does win, what Newstalk wants to do with the quasi-national licence is to offer what it believes Radio 1 does not. The plan is to build on its current programme schedule with a few additions to offer a broader, national appeal.

"Entertaining talk" is the pitch. The target is the 25 to 44 age group, a demographic that Newstalk's research suggests has an appetite for talk radio and is not properly served by Radio 1.

The quarterly JNLR surveys, the official industry statistics, relied on by both Nadvertising agencies and radio stations to calculate listenership figures, suggest that Newstalk has a point.

Well over half of Radio 1's listeners are aged 55 and over. Listenership varies from programme to programme but, overall, Radio 1 commands a 23% share of the radio audience nationwide. Within the 25-44 age group, however, it holds only an 11% share.

Conversely, the bulk of Newstalk's listenership in Dublin is within that, younger age group.

"We genuinely believe there's an appetite there for this, " says Geraghty.

It does seem an odd juncture for Newstalk to push for a national platform, though.

The station has yet to establish a viable business in Dublin, and its 5% market share isn't giving any of its local competitors . . . much less RTE . . . too many sleepless nights.

There have been signs of forward progress in recent months. George Hook, better known outside Dublin as one of RTE television's rugby pundits, has been, literally, a roaring success. His early evening programme attracts 35,000 listeners in Dublin, more than the Dublin listenership of Today FM's longrunning Last Word.

It has proven difficult for Newstalk to carve out a viable niche, however. Geraghty argues that the station should still be judged as a start-up, to a certain extent.

It takes time, and money, simply to alert people to the station's existence. And it takes more time to recruit listeners, even with established names such as Hook and Dunphy.

There is a hint of frustration from Geraghty that the wider world has not yet been bowled over by Newstalk, borne, it seems, from her obvious enthusiasm for the business.

"There's no question about it. We probably would have liked to be further ahead but we are where we are, " she says, though she is the first to admit that the figures don't lie.

"It's been slow. It's been a little bit painful. We probably think we deserve more than we're getting, but there's no point moaning. Everybody is judged by the same yardstick."

And Newstalk hopes to be judged by a national, rather than a local, yardstick in the very near future. The BCI will consider its application over the coming months and will, most likely, request a meeting and an oral hearing before making a decision.

If Newstalk's application is successful, Geraghty says, it could roll out the transmission network, recruit the extra personnel necessary and begin broadcasting on a national basis within six or seven months. That would indicate an early 2007 start, all going well.

The projections in the licence application are aggressive. Newstalk expects to have a 6% market share of the national audience by year three, at which time it expects to have broken even.

Geraghty acknowledges that the headline numbers are ambitious, given that the station has hit neither of those goals in Dublin. In response, she says the station has many of the staff it needs in place, is already producing most of the programming required and has already incurred most of the fixed costs.

"It's something that we've thought through, " she says.

"We're four years in the business and we understand what it takes to put together a talk offering.

"Talk is very expensive, so we recognise what we have to do to support that".

THE WOMAN AND HER COMPANY

ELAINE GERAGHTY

Background: Joined Dublin station 98FM when it commenced broadcasting in 1989 and reckons she has since done just about every job it is possible to do in a radio station. Among those jobs was a stint as a breakfast time presenter on 98FM. "Did it, loved it, learned everything that I could but there's other things to do in life, " she says. Since moving behind the scenes she has occupied a variety of roles within Denis O'Brien's Communicorp radio conglomerate, which owns stations in the UK, Ireland and in Eastern Europe. She was group product manager with Communicorp before being approached to head up Newstalk.

Hobbies: Reading, relaxing with her husband, three dogs, two cats and "some tropical fish" and attending games in Croke Park.

NEWSTALK Background: Dublin talk radio station whose shareholders include Denis O'Brien's Radio Two Thousand and media company Setanta.

Financial Information: Lost 4m in 2003, the most recent year for which accounts are available. Has accumulated losses of 14m to date since it launched four years ago. Newstalk is projecting turnover of 6.7m in 2006, if its application for a quasi-national radio licence is successful, and estimates it will make a net loss of 679,000.