Now, however, he plans to top this with an ambitious plan to lure seven of RTE's biggest radio stars away from the state-owned broadcaster if his new company, Wilton Radio, wins the state's new over-45s multi-city licence.

"If we win this licence, we would love to approach all the top names in Irish broadcasting because we have the resources and we have the vision. Our business case is built on seven broadcasters paid at RTE levels, " said Healy.

He has already secured the support of renowned former RTE broadcaster Mike Murphy, who has invested in Wilton's Radio 3 bid and who has committed to come out of retirement to host a new weekend show if it is successful. Healy believes that, as well as drawing in listeners, Murphy will also help persuade other top names to join the station.

"If you have someone like Mike Murphy sitting one side of you saying 'this thing is going to be a goer', I think you'll find that the best broadcasters in this country will come."

The former Newstalk chief executive's confidence is rooted in the extraordinary early success of Wilton Radio, which was established only last year but is due to launch its first station, i102-104, this autumn.

Wilton was founded by Healy and another former Communicorp executive, Deborah Fagan, with the aid of private equity vehicle Boundary Capital. After years of making money from radio for O'Brien, the two decided to branch out on their own, not by acquiring an existing station but by taking the cheaper but riskier route into radio: winning new licences.

The company, which has a 20m war chest, stunned the radio industry by winning two 10year youth licences covering the north-west and midlands/north-east regions, something which clearly gave Healy great pleasure.

"Isn't it great to surprise people?" he said.

"The best buzz I've got [from the whole process] was when I was sitting in a hotel on a sofa with an investor about this time last year and, in a one-hour period, two of the socalled dons of Irish broadcasting walked by.

T Both of them said: 'Listen, if you're looking for a gig, we'd love you to talk to us about running x, y and z'. None of them saw me or Deborah as a potential threat in the licensing. Isn't that fascinating? We were successful at operating, but then, there's a sense of surprise."

Healy bristled, however, at the suggestion that one of the major factors behind Wilton Radio's two licence wins was a desire in the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) to increase competition in radio by facilitating a new entrant.

"Sorry, the BCI has four criteria for winning things. There are four issues: diversity of content, pluralism with regard to ownership, efficiency of spectrum and commercial viability. We hit all four of those and we drove them home. We won the licences based on an economic vision that no one else had; we won them on a vision for staff . . . we are putting 60,000 a year in training, our nearest competitors were putting in 10,000 . . . and we had huge vision for a listener who was living in a podcasting, blogging world in terms of interactivity."

Some industry sources have also questioned the long-term commitment of Wilton's main financial backer, Boundary Capital, pointing out that its stated medium-term goal for its investments is to secure a high return within five years through refinancing or a partial exit from the company.

Healy admitted that the company relied heavily on Boundary's support but he said he was confident that Boundary viewed Wilton as a long-term investment.

"They are a crucial part of the set-up. They give the BCI the corporate assurance that if anything goes belly-up, they're there. They give me and Deborah wonderful acumen, wonderful vision and wonderful thinking, " he said. "And what have they sold? Everything I've googled about them over the past five years indicates that they are building and acquiring. I know they're with me for the long haul."

Healy said he found this questioning of the long-term commitment of his backers ironic given the widespread consolidation in Irish radio over the past five years.

"This industry has flogged radio stations like people flog bananas. If you look at this multi-city licence, the only people who are stayers at the moment are Communicorp. But hang on, don't they have Paul McGuinness?

Didn't he sell a licence four or five weeks ago to Thomas Crosbie Holdings? You have Cream with John McColgan but didn't he sell Today FM for 70m? Then you have 4FM where Martin Block sold a licence to UTV. To talk about stayers is hilarious."

According to Healy, the next step in the group's long-term strategy will be to apply for three more licences in the near future, including the upcoming Dublin classic rock licence, using the remainder of its original 20m funding.

When asked whether this could lead to the fledgling radio group becoming overstretched, particularly if it won all three, Healy said he was confident that Wilton had the resources to operate the stations successfully and that he would not have to return to his original backers to look for more funds.

"We're planning to invest around 12m to 13m to fund the first three and then we have 7m left to do the three if we won them. Also, what you don't see in our licence applications is our confidential annex, which the BCI sees, which shows the calibre of people we have in place to manage everything, " he said. "We're putting in the people to ensure we are not overstretched and, if anything, we probably have one or two people too many.

We're putting in that level of comfort now. And for the multi-city licence, we have, in Irish terms, a stunning management team for that licence if we are to become successful."

Although Healy's main focus is on winning new licences, he doesn't rule out following his former boss O'Brien, who last week bought Emap's three Irish radio stations for 200m, on the acquisition trail if the right station came on the market.

Indeed, as Healy puts it, one of his partner Fagan's roles at Communicorp was acquiring and selling stations with O'Brien "from Dublin to Estonia, from Helsinki to the Black Sea".

"[To close the Emap deal] Communicorp may have to offload an asset, be it Spin, 98FM or FM104. Would we look at that? I think that going back to the shareholders and the financial matrix we've built, we would look at that, " he said. "We're firmly focused on licences but we have a one-pager over here that we can refer to if anything interesting happens. But we have done our homework."

CV
DAN HEALY

Age: 44 Occupation: Chief executive, Wilton Radio
Employment history: 2003 . . . 2005: chief executive, Newstalk; 1999 . . . 2003: chief executive, 98FM; 1996 . . . 1999: sales director, Communicorp
Family: Married with two children
Hobbies: Horseriding and GAA