Trintech's hardware division supplies credit-card payment terminals and related technology to retailers and banks. The 9.5m disposal of the division leaves the company as a pure software play, according to McGuire.

"Whether we like it or not, the hardware business on the payments side has become a scale business, " he says.

US-based Verifone has a market capitalisation of 1.2bn and annual sales of almost 400m. McGuire says he considers it an achievement that Trintech's loss-making niche payments business should attract the attention of such a heavy-hitter.

There is no lasting disappointment from exiting the hardware business, he says.

"What gives me some solace is that Verifone has been very successful. They're the market leader." He says it is a tribute to Trintech's staff and to the company's "leadership" in its own niche of the payments business that Verifone came calling when the business was put up for sale.

It is hardly a big surprise in the light of the recent transaction, but McGuire doesn't subscribe to the view that it is automatically a bad thing when Irish technology companies are swallowed by larger, foreign-owned rivals.

The trend has been much in evidence this year. Most recently, compliance software specialist Similarity Systems and digital imaging company Stockbyte were taken out by US-based multinationals for 43m and 110m respectively.

Despite the healthy evidence that tech entrepreneurs can build valuable businesses in Ireland, there is a feeling that it is a shame that they are often swallowed up in their prime.

But McGuire doesn't hold with that notion. "We sometimes beat ourselves up, unnecessarily in my view, " he says.

As a committed member of the Irish Software Association, McGuire is four-square behind the push to build Irish technology companies of scale, he says. But he doesn't see any harm in companies cashing in their chips if the deal is right.

"Maybe what we're actually good at is bringing companies from zero to 20m, and that's not so bad."

At the same time, he says "it would be nice if some of them got to the big league themselves". There is no shortage of potential, he says, picking telecoms software firm Cape Technologies and digital effects company Havok as two that have the right stuff.

McGuire is involved in the ISA's Leadership For Growth programme. Run with the renowned Stanford Business School in California, the programme trains and advises chief executives of new Irish software companies.

The role of mentor is one McGuire appears to enjoy. At 46, he is hardly an elder statesman, but he has certainly been around the block in technology terms. He was once one of Ireland's richest men, with a paper fortune of 500m before the bursting of the dotcom bubble and the precipitous fall in the company's share price.

Now he is relatively upbeat in assessing the prospects for Irish technology.

"First of all I think it's a good market environment, " he says.

"I've seen a lot worse. Some people say it's very tough . . .

they don't know what tough is."

The economy is buoyant, he notes. Market conditions have certainly improved since the dark days of 2000/2001 and there is funding available from domestic and international sources for companies with good business ideas.

Asked for his advice to aspiring technology companies, he lights on two issues that say much about what he has learned from Trintech's experience. The first message is focus, he says. Find a niche "and dominate it". The second is growth and "understanding the challenges of growing the business".

It remains to be seen whether Trintech is on the right track to accomplish the former but McGuire knows more than most about the challenges of growth. He is now, effectively, in phase three of a long-running project to revive Trintech's fortunes.

The first phase was one of cost-cutting and lay-offs as McGuire tried to stabilise the company amid the market turmoil of the early part of the century. The second was a "refocusing phase" leading up to the sale of its payments division . . . previously one of the core tenets of Trintech's business . . . to Verifone.

"It is now into a growth phase, " McGuire says. "You will see, over time, Trintech becoming a very different animal. You will see Trintech becoming profitable. You will see Trintech growing."

The growth will come from what Trintech calls fund management software or FMS.

Trintech's FMS allows customers to monitor transactions and financial information. That ranges from simple information on everyday events such as account reconciliation and bank deposits to complex data on cash flow which can be used to put together an "audit trail" that helps organisations to comply with their obligations under stock market regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley in the US.

The company has 400 FMS customers at present, mainly in consumer-oriented businesses such as retail. It has now developed software for financial services and the healthcare, which McGuire believes has huge potential, especially in the US.

With the $12.1m from Verifone, Trintech has $35m in cash to put behind a push into those markets, some of which is likely to be used for acquisitions. McGuire says the revenue opportunities are sizeable and that if Trintech delivers on its promise it can more than double in size from its current market cap of 40m.

"I definitely think the next milestone will be 100m-plus, " he says. "That's very achievable. I would be confident that if we fulfil these plans that we will have a very successful, high-margin and profitable business."

It's a long road back. At its peak in 1999, Trintech was a 2bn company, though that valuation was based more on Nasdaq froth and dotcom hype than substance. Second-quarter results announced by the company last week show how far the company has fallen from that dizzy valuation. Trintech posted a net quarterly loss of $2.1m ( 1.64m), though $2m ( 1.56m) of that loss is attributable to the divested hardware business. The FMS division, for its part, had revenue of $6m ( 4.5m), up 12% on the same period last year.

Now that that division is the company's sole focus, McGuire is confident that it can continue to deliver double-digit earnings growth and take Trintech back to profitability for the first time since its stock market flotation in 1999.

He is following his own advice about zeroing in on a market niche. The company is "laser-focused on one particular challenge". Now it's time for Trintech to open fire.