Eamon Fallon, who co-founded Daft. ie with his brother Brian 10 years ago, said the web-based property advertising company had delivered turnover of 2m and profit of 1.1m in 2006. Daft's main source of income is subscription fees from estate agents, which it charges them to advertise properties on its site.

The company's future was the subject of much speculation last year when rival property site Myhome. ie was acquired by the Irish Times for 50m. Daft also received a number of approaches from parties interested in buying the business.

Fallon said despite "tentative discussions" having taken place with potential buyers Daft was not for sale.

"We've knocked that on the head. There's so many things that we want to do and we didn't think that anyone could do it better than we could, " he said.

Fallon predicted that Daft would double its turnover to 4m this year as it continues to sign up more estate agents around the country.

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), Daft. ie is the most popular property website in Ireland. It logged 38.8 million hits from more than 570,000 discrete users in the nine months to September 2006, according to the most recent available data. Myhome. ie had 18 million hits from 240,000 visitors over the same period.