The flat TV screens embedded in the wood-panelled walls of the reception room show music videos to visitors who wait in bright red 1960s-style chairs. The pink covers of the company brochures on the coffee tables depict a woman in roller skates with piles of paper in her arms.

While the office on Dublin's Burlington Road may resemble that of a trendy technology start-up, it is in fact home to Premier Group, a recruitment company founded in Cork 19 years ago by Kerryman Pat Fitzgerald.

Setting up a recruitment business in the late 1980s, when high unemployment was prompting many of Mr Fitzgerald's fellow UCC graduates to emigrate, may not have seemed the smartest idea. But he had spotted a gap in the market, an insight that would ultimately lead to the development of Ireland's largest recruitment group.

After graduating in 1985 and discovering few vacancies for accountants in Ireland, Mr Fitzgerald moved to London. While working there as a trainee accountant, he realised there was a dearth of suitable job candidates in the UK to meet the demand in the sector.

Abandoning his career in accountancy, he returned to Ireland in 1987. With nothing but a bank loan and a bright idea, he set up a company in Cork to supply British companies with Irish accountants.

"I was fascinated with the recruitment industry, especially as it wasn't developed at all in Ireland," he said.

"The late 1980s and early 1990s were very difficult times. Cork was a small market and I could count the number of clients I had on two pages. You definitely couldn't afford to lose one of them.

"This made me realise that the client is sacred and you have to do all you can to provide a good service."

Premier opened its La Crème division in 1989 to provide secretaries, administrators and other support staff to companies. The division, complete with a fashionable brand designed to attract young workers, entered the UK market in September. It now employs some 90 people in Ireland, London, Manchester, Bristol and Guildford.

Premier Group didn't open an office in Dublin until the first quarter of 2000, starting first with its La Crème division. Mr Fitzgerald says, in retrospect, this was the right decision.

"I had gone to college in Cork and I knew Cork," he said. "We had no interest in coming to Dublin just for the sake of it. We are only interested in entering a market if we can become a dominant player, as that's how you attract the most clients." The company's Premier business, which recruits finance staff, didn't open its doors in the capital until 2002, after the internet bubble burst. The resulting economic downturn reduced demand for staff, bringing many of the start-up recruitment agencies established in the late 1990s into the depths of bankruptcy.

"The Celtic Tiger created massive demand for staff and the industry struggled to grow quickly enough and to become professional enough," Mr Fitzgerald said. "The correction in the market between 2001 and 2003 saw a lot of companies go out of business.

"We were fortunate during that period as we still grew between 20 to 25 per cent a year. These are the years we are most proud of. We managed to buck the trend in that market and that put us in a good position for when the market recovered."

Premier primed itself for further growth when it carried out a major restructuring programme last year by refurbishing its offices and setting up a shared service centre in Cork that employs 40 people, who provide back-office support for the entire group.

It also changed 90 per cent of its management "by design", Mr Fitzgerald said. Last year marked the group's first full year of operation in the UK.

The company gained a foothold in the British recruitment market in 2005 when it bought financial recruitment specialist Nigel Lynn Associates for €9 million.

The day it unveiled the purchase of Nigel Lynn - a move that doubled that company's size - Premier announced it had hired Steve Carter, a former managing director of Robert Half's business in the UK and Ireland, to oversee the group's operations in the UK. In 2006, Premier handpicked some 14 managers from the UK's top five recruitment agencies to replace existing managers.

The company's expansion into the UK will play a key part in achieving its target of increasing revenue to €250 million by the end of 2009, from €85 million in 2006.

"Our reason for moving to the UK in the first place is that we are working with very strict growth plans," Mr Fitzgerald said.

"We have to double in size at least every three years and these plans have been in place for the last 15 years."

Premier, which currently employs 330 people in eight offices in Ireland and 15 locations in Britain, plans to take on about 100 extra staff in the next year to facilitate its growth.

Mr Fitzgerald expects to roll out its Brunel division, which recruits technical staff, in the UK next year and set up Verkom, the group's IT recruitment business, there in 2009.

"All forecasts for the UK recruitment industry in the next three years are extremely positive," he said.

"The temporary and contract market in the UK is booming and is the fastest-growing sector there.

"We learned a lot in the last 18 months by watching the contract market grow in the UK. The Irish recruitment market is usually four or five years behind the UK, though it has also seen huge growth in the temporary and contract market in the last two or three years.

"All our contract work is at the professional end, with third-level educated staff. At the more senior end, contractors provide a real alternative to bringing in interim talent for projects such as restructuring.

"Businesses that used to just hire consultants are now using a combination of consultants and contract staff."

So what is the secret to Premier's success in an industry that Mr Fitzgerald concedes is remarkably competitive?

He believes it's down to loyalty to the company and the group's broad spectrum of products. "We are not reliant on any one sector," he said. "We have also been through a couple of downturns and you learn from experience.

"In the last 18 or 19 years, we have lost less than 10 people to competitors," he said. "Plus we have a close-knit management team that has been together for the last six to 10 years. We've never lost a senior manager to a competitor. That's the soul of the business."