MICK KEARNEY has a knack for picking winning business opportunities but he didn't need special insight to figure out that providing health care for Ireland's aging population is a growth industry.

If you were to look at a graph of Ireland's population by age bracket, it would look like a two-humped camel. At one end is the huge bump of what David McWilliams calls the Pope's Children, the family-forming house buyers who are sustaining Ireland's economic growth while keeping house prices up and maternity wards full. Receiving far less attention are those at the other end, who in retirement would have been able to count on help from family, usually a daughter, to take care of them in their golden years.

Celtic Tiger Ireland has changed all that. With twoincome families far more common and necessary, as well as the rising expectations that wealth brings, there has been a crisis in caring for the elderly - most dramatically illustrated by recent scandals at some of the country's nursing homes.

At the same time, in June 2005, Mick Kearney had finished building the Snap printing franchise into a well-known Irish brand and was looking for another franchise opportunity.

Kearney, from Dunboyne, Co Meath, left Ireland for Australia in 1982 with his young wife, a nurse. He worked as an ad salesman in Perth, which he didn't enjoy.

But he joined a local rugby club, where he met the late Paddy Thompson, originally from Mount Mellick, Co Laois. Thompson had launched Snap Printing, and hired Kearney as a groundfloor trainee printer.

Within two years Kearney was offered a franchise to run. He had a choice between moving to Queensland, Australia, or back home to Ireland.

Despite 16% unemployment and 16% interest rates in 1984, the pull of family left behind was too strong, and they returned to open up a Snap franchise here.

"It wasn't a great business decision, " he said. "We lost money the first two months and made money the third.

Fear of failure drove me on.

Get food on the table, pay rent . . . everything else was a bonus."

In 1992 he brought in Ed Murphy as a partner. Together they grew the business from five outlets to 16, with turnover rising from £3m to £16m in 10 years. Now it stands at 22 outlets with a turnover of 25m. Kearney brought in another partner and then sold his interest in the business.

"Franchises are like managing a football team: getting in new people and new methods is often not a bad idea."

In 2005 he found a company called Home Instead, which had launched 10 years earlier in the US and spread to 600 locations.

"It is without doubt the best franchise I've ever come across, " he said.

Kearney points to the group's success in several markets including Japan, a testament to its universal appeal.

"What you look for in a franchise is the ability to cross boundaries. A number of US franchises wouldn't work in Europe. But if it works in America and works in Japan, you couldn't get more diverse cultures."

So in June 2005 their first location opened in Leopardstown, where Home Instead had the most successful opening in the franchise's history, he said. The company offers home help, including help to a person getting showered and dressed, cooking light meals and light housekeeping, that allows seniors to live independently at home for longer who might otherwise have to go into residential care.

Kearney stresses that the staff are heavily screened and reference-checked, that around 50% of the carers are Irish and that there are a team of nurses who do training and quality checks.

Importantly, the staff are employees rather than independent contractors, and therefore have their PRSI paid and are covered by the company's insurance . . . unlike, he says, many independent contractors.

The service is not cheap, however. The average customer, with three hours of help five days a week, would pay between 1,200 and 1,500 a month. More hours would mean a higher cost.

Full-time live-in carers could cost 1,500 a week or more.

This compares not unfavourably to residential care, which would cost anywhere from 600 to 1,500 per week or more, but without the individual attention.

Tax relief up to 42% of the costs up to 50,000, evenly split among various family members who might be paying, is available from government, but the service still has to charge VAT of 13.5%, something Kearney and others in the home-help industry are lobbying to have changed.

Certainly government is supportive of the idea. Last autumn Mary Harney earmarked 55m in the health budget towards helping seniors live independently at home for longer using services like Home Instead.

Kearney reports that the company has 125 people using the services of the Leopardstown office, with other branches springing up in Belfield, Nutgrove, Fairview and farther afield in Galway and, this month, in Cork.

Barring any sudden shift in Ireland's economic fortunes . . .

and based on Kearney's track record . . . it seems likely that more will follow.