To illustrate the power of HD, one of her Irish colleagues rather mischievously selects a recording of the England versus Trinidad and Tobago match from this summer's World Cup.

"I don't think I can watch this, " sighs the English managing director of Sky Ireland, reflecting on the England team's disappointing campaign.

Over on Sky News, meanwhile, reports are emerging from Heathrow of a plot to smuggle a bomb on board a commercial flight.

The resulting disruption to flights means Bushell will have to delay her return trip to London, leaving her husband to nurse their five-monthold daughter through a dose of chicken pox.

All in all it's an unpleasant morning's viewing for the young managing director, who divides her time between Dublin, Sky headquarters in London, and Scotland: the site of Sky's UK and Ireland customer service centre. If the choice were hers she would prefer to be watching Desperate Housewives or 24, she says, and is "pretty obsessed with movies".

Asked to name a favourite, she admits to having an "embarrassing" fondness for a recent remake of a classic 1970s crime caper but then pleads that its name be stricken from the record to save her blushes.

Sky Ireland's recent results, on the other hand, make very pleasant viewing for the company and are unlikely to cause Bushell any embarrassment. Over the past 12 months Sky added 64,000 new digital television subscribers, posting its highest rate of growth since 2001. The satellite broadcaster is now broadcasting digital TV to 427,000 subscribers, representing 30% of Ireland's 1.42 million households. A further 604,000 households (up from 585,000 in 2004) subscribe to Sky channels through various cable television providers.

Two of those providers, NTL and Chorus, merged last year when Chorus's parent, Liberty Global, paid 325m for its former rival to create the largest pay TV provider in Ireland. The newly-formed UPC Ireland is in the process of rationalising its operations, cutting 350 jobs in the process, and beefing up its cable network to carry the mix of broadband, television and telecoms services from which it hopes to generate a return on its investment.

While that process is ongoing Sky appears to be well positioned to make hay. Bushell acknowledges that Sky currently faces a much weaker competitive environment in Ireland than it does in the UK. Irish cable companies "have really not invested, " she says, adding that "they have a weak infrastructure". UPC has said it will spend up to 400m over the next five years to put that right but that still gives Sky a window of opportunity. "I think that will take some time to trickle down into the actual customer service, " Bushell says.

She credits Sky's history of product innovation and its level of customer service as two of the most important planks of its business model. It's no coincidence that these are the two areas where NTL and Chorus have traditionally fallen down. Sky rolled out its Sky+ digital video recorders (DVR) to subscribers in Ireland in 2003. NTL and Chorus customers are still waiting for similar technology to be made available to them. More recent innovations include the newly-launched Sky+ Remote Control. "Now if you're sitting on the beach in the Maldives and you forgot to recordFair City you can just send a text message through to your Sky+ box, " says Bushell. It is understood that around 15% of Sky digital subscribers, 75,000 homes, have Sky+. As that number rises it will make advertisers increasingly nervous, as viewers become more likely to fast forward over the ads.

Sky is also putting a big push behind HD television before any other Irish providers are out of the blocks. In the UK the HD launch was timed to coincide with the World Cup in the hope that subscribers would rush out to buy HD-ready TV sets and pony up more than 400 for a Sky HD set-top box to watch England in play in full, high-definition glory. The HD boxes come with the Sky+ DVR as standard, which should accelerate the adoption of ad skipping technology.

Such innovations are necessary to establish a competitive advantage in the UK, where Sky has stiff competition both from cable providers such as NTL/Telewest and from telecoms company BT, which has recently begun offering television and videoon-demand services. In Ireland the case for launching HD isn't quite as strong.

"It wasn't driven by competitive pressure. We probably could have waited, " says Bushell. So why didn't they? "An Irish subscriber is as important to us as an English one and should receive the same product quality and customer service, " she says.

Diplomacy aside, Sky is keenly aware of the differences between the two markets. Bushell was appointed to her present position by James Murdoch. BSkyB's chief executive, and son of Sky founder Rupert Murdoch, visited Ireland shortly after his elevation to the control room and decided that the company wasn't making quite enough of its opportunities in the Irish market.

Since then the company has refocused its efforts, introducing a "new homes division", for instance, a sales team which solely targets new housing developments. The relentless pace of residential construction in Ireland meant it was an obvious step, says Bushell. "That's an area we need to focus on penetrating more heavily."

Sky also has plans to increase broadband penetration in Ireland.

Following the purchase of broadband provider Easynet in the UK, Sky has begun an aggressive rollout of internet services, aiming to leverage its substantial customer base.

It's an obvious move for Ireland too but will take longer to get off the ground. Sky is involved in discussions with Eircom and with the communications regulator Comreg on the issue of local loop unbundling (LLU) . . . the process by which it can access the copper wire telephone network to enable it to provide broadband through Eircom exchanges. Easynet is using unbundled BT exchanges in the UK to do just that but the slow pace of unbundling here means Sky is still stuck in the traps.

Bushell says Sky's preference for the Irish broadband market, if and when the unbundling issue is resolved, is to enter the market "organically" rather than by acquiring an existing player. "An acquisition approach is a possibility but probably a second choice, " she says.

The LLU impasse is not the only obstacle for Sky to overcome in Ireland. Recently Sky and fellow broadcasters Channel 6 and Setanta have been agitating for a reform of the audience measurement system used by Nielsen research to determine viewing figures in Ireland. Among other things, Sky is not happy with the size of the audience sample used to measure digital television homes.

The sample size is small and notoriously volatile. Audience figures for a Scottish Football match on Setanta last year, for example, suggested the unlikely scenario that significantly more young women than men had tuned in. On another occasion Nielsen figures mistakenly attributed thousands of Sky One viewers to Channel 4, depressing Sky's viewing figures and prompting advertisers to direct their spending elsewhere before the technical fault was discovered.

Sky, Setanta and Channel 6 have commissioned a feasibility study on setting up an alternative measurement system between them. Bushell is quick to point out that Sky and its digital confreres have the backing of the advertising industry in their quest for better data.

The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has held meetings with Nielsen, the terrestrial channels and the dissidents with a view to reaching a resolution.

"The ideal solution would be that we jointly recreate an audience measurement system that has everybody on board, " says Bushell. If not, Sky is prepared to follow through on the draft plans for a new system.

For her part Bushell would rather concentrate on keeping Sky's subscriber momentum going. The company has a UK and Ireland subscriber goal of 10 million digital customers by 2010. On a pro-rata basis, that would imply that Sky Ireland would have around 550,000 subscribers by then.

Bushell won't be held hostage to a number and declines an invitation to outline a target for Ireland. "I think we feel there's still scope for generating further growth, " she says. On present form, it's difficult to argue with that.

CV
Name: Delia Bushell
Age: 34
Family: Married with one daughter.
Home: Lives in London and divides her time between Britain and Ireland.
Background: A former strategy consultant, she joined BSkyB seven years ago and has worked in a variety of roles across the organisation. Her stops on what she calls the "Sky tour" have included positions on both the content and infrastructure sides of the Sky business. Among her previous roles she has worked at Sky's Travel Channel, liaised with the company's joint venture partners and, most recently, acted as commercial director of Sky Networks. She was appointed managing director of Sky Ireland in August 2005.
Hobbies: Tennis, going to the gym, playing golf and going to the cinema.