The builder has been ramping up activity in Britain for several years and expects to complete 900 units there this year. It is currently on course to build 1,100 in Ireland by the end of the year.

The company, which has been building houses since it was founded by the McInerney family in 1909, hopes to increase UK completions to 1,400 in 2007. Over the same period it will build between 1,100 and 1,200 units in Ireland.

"We're looking for about 10% growth out of Ireland and 30% out of the UK, " O'Connor said. The UK would be the company's engine for growth in the future, he said.

"The plan is that the UK business will ultimately be bigger than Ireland."

McInerney reported pretax profit of 11.2m over the first six months of this year, according to interim figures published last week, a very slight improvement on the 11m it made over the first half of 2005 despite a 34% increase in turnover to 229m.

O'Connor said the business was performing "much better than the numbers would imply" and that most of its completions, and its revenue, were weighted towards the second half of the year.

The company has also seen a significant rise in costs due to "big investment in the UK" which has doubled McInerney's residential building capacity in the space of a year, according to O'Connor.