HE'S 29, back home in Dublin after six years in England, and ready for action: "If you want to see what we're going to do on the outskirts of Dublin, on the southside and on the northside, look at the Sprucefield centre outside Lisburn on the way up to Belfast. Currys and PC World side-by-side. Then increase the size by about 50 per cent."

Mr Peter Keenan, the new head of Dixons ink the Republic, came to his post by a circuitous route. Born in Dublin, his family moved to Drogheda, Duleek and Newry, where he was educated by the Christian Brothers. He went to Trinity College, Dublin, studying law, then moved to London and became an accountant.

"I worked for Arthur Andersen, doing receiverships and distressed company consulting. I did that for five years. I worked on the Robert Maxwell case for a year when Andersen's was the receiver. I was in there saying `Where's our money? Where's the pensioners' money? I joined Dixons just over a year ago," he says.

Now he's part of the rush by British retailers, awake to the level of economic growth here, moving fast into the Irish market. The company runs Dixons, the high street electronics stores, Currys, which sells larger white goods, usually in suburban retail parks, and PC World, a chain of computer superstores.

He acknowledges Dixons has been stung before on overseas expansions and says it looked before it leapt into the Republic. In the 1970s the firm moved into the Netherlands, but "cultural difficulties" ensured the project failed. In the 1980s the company made a concerted push into the US market. That too went sour.

"That experience forced a fundamental review of its business. The company said: `We've screwed up the States, we're about to be taken over what are we going to do here?'

"They decided that Dixons and Currys were basically competing with each other. They looked ahead, saw that TVs, fridges, appliances were getting bigger, and decided to move Currys out of the high street."

At the start of the 1990s, the company looked at getting into the Republic.

"They saw a country that was still in the depths of recession; they saw a lot of complications about getting their systems to work in Ireland, handling the foreign exchange differential and the VAT difference," says Mr Keenan.

Instead, Dixons opted to take over PC World, then a four-store chain. It now has 32 shops.

But that was then, and this is now.

"This time, I was the one who was charged with having a look at Ireland. I came over and saw a country that had changed phenomenally since I had been here in 1990. The amount of growth, of optimism, took me by surprise.

"In fact I had been coming back quite regularly; it just never occurred to me that it had taken off so quickly. That against the backdrop of low inflation, low wage-inflation and a stable economy - it's just fantastic," he adds.

In the past six months, Dixons has opened a new store in the Jervis Shopping Centre and bought most of the Harry Moore shops. Mr Keenan is happy with how things have gone, especially with the new store.

"We've opened hundreds of stores and we have a pretty good idea after a month how it's going to work out. It's looking good." The company is also exceptionally pleased with the staff that it has recruited in Dublin.

"And it's not a fluke. Generally the quality of people here is excellent. It has surprised a lot of people back in the UK, and I would not be surprised if in the future, we found that we were actually recruiting people here for there."

First on his list of priorities, however, is expansion. Dixons believes that, in the long term, Dublin could sustain three Currys and two PC Worlds. He dismisses trade rumours that the company would try to buy out Power City.

"No way! Why would we buy them? We wouldn't get any sites that we want - because we wouldn't trade any of their sites - they're just not in the locations we want. Also, their configurations aren't suitable and their systems aren't what we want. It would be easier for us to go green field."

Dixons wants to place its stores not in industrial parks, but in retail parks, on the side of the new ring-road: "They haven't decided the final route for the southern road. When they do, then there will be a retail park.

He hopes to put a Currys and a PC World beside one another on the southside and perhaps another on the northside.

Galway, Cork and Limerick are also on the cards, but after Dublin. "We're very choosy about locations, so expansion will be driven by opportunities as they arrive. And if we have to option sites now, we will."