UNDER THE RADAR/Carrie-Anne Barry, De Barra Publishing: When Carrie-Anne Barry was living in Valencia in Spain, she was very impressed with her three-year- old daughter's pre-school which utilised a curriculum-planning concept that fully engaged parents through use of creative materials and music, writes Ciaran Hancock.

Returning home to Ireland, the former advisory consultant with KPMG found that a similar service was largely unavailable in Ireland. "We thought it would be great to develop and adapt something for the Irish market and we began a very long and comprehensive consultation with care providers and county childcare committees and interested bodies in childcare," Barry says.

Along with her husband Chris, who previously had held various management positions in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries both in Ireland and the Middle East, she set up De Barra Publishing in September 2006 to supply educational resources to Ireland's rapidly expanding pre-school sector.

Largely self-funded, with some additional support from the Clare County Enterprise Board, the company has developed the Project Bubbles brand, a comprehensive programme of play-based activities, ideas, music and visual aids designed to help care providers and parents with the day-to-day provision of a quality childcare experience for children aged two to five years.

Project Bubbles features easy- to-follow guides, manuals and curriculum-planning tools for childcare practitioners. Included are hundreds of activities, games and creative ideas for each month of the year, original music and songs linked to monthly themes, character puppets representing cultural and social diversity, posters, flashcards, themed jigsaw puzzles, as well as communication tools to engage parents in the planned curriculum.

The brand was unveiled in March 2007 and was delivered to its first customers last August. Since then, it has made its way into more than 400 pre-schools around Ireland.

"In Ireland, there are around about 4,500 pre-schools currently and it is growing," Barry says. "It is definitely a burgeoning industry and with that as well, parents are requiring more resources because they are more interested in the education of their children, even at a young age."

Currently employing five full-time staff, Barry says this is expected to rise to five by the end of the month and seven by the end of the year. "My background is in research and consultancy so that has really helped in engaging in a consultative process with the childcare world in Ireland and we have hired childcare professionals to help us now."

Having studied law and business at UCD and having worked for KPMG in Bahrain, Barry was well equipped to start up her own business, but she says that family demands were one of the prime reasons behind her decision.

"I was in a very busy job with long hours and I had children and I wanted to be able to control my own time. I would say I work longer hours now but at least I'm able to control the hours that I work. So that was the motivation behind it."

It is far from being a lifestyle business, though. The company has just won the 2007 Clare Enterprise Award and Barry was a finalist and category winner for "Best Export Potential" in the 2007 Shell Live-wire Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Following early success in Ireland, the company has recently appointed a distributor to market the brand in Spain and is currently on track to secure distribution agreements for Britain as well as Central and South America.

"When I worked for KPMG in the Middle East, I helped in the set-up of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in the kingdom of Bahrain and I realised then that Ireland's reputation in providing the best education in the world was huge. I thought we could trade on this very successfully and the interest has been great," says Barry.

The aim is to double sales by the end of the year, she adds, and she expects to see at least 7 per cent of sales originate from Spain. "The business is on target to deliver a modest profit in its first year. We are very pleased with that."

Barry says the business is also looking at opportunities in the Middle East and South Africa.