Dublin rock band 21 Demands may have lost out in the finals of You're a Starlast Sunday night, but if their business savvy is anything to go by, we can expect to hear a lot more of them.

Although three of its members are still in school, the band have already made the shrewd move of forming a limited company to manage the rights of their music. So where did these young musicians get their business smarts from?

Interestingly, their decision to create a company stems from a mini-business some of the band members set up in Coláiste Choilm in Swords a few years ago. It involved providing music lessons as part of the Fingal Student Enterprise Programme.

The programme is still going strong, giving more students each year the opportunity to get practical experience in researching and running their own business.

Last week a team of first years hailing from the same school as 21 Demands won the junior category in the north Dublin finals with their innovative "Liquid Air" product. Inspired by the recent restrictions on bringing toiletries through airport security, the students designed a travel bag filled with miniature versions of health and beauty products.

A team of fifth-year students from the Irish-speaking school, Gaelcholáiste Reachrann in Donaghmede, won the senior category with their Irish-language badge, "Béal na nGael". While the badge is based on the idea of the "fáinne", a pin worn by people willing to speak Irish in everyday encounters, the modern cartoon design of "Béal na nGael" has managed to shake off the old-style Peg Sayers connotations of the traditional lapel pin.

The badge has proved to be a commercial hit, with more than 3,000 already sold. "The demand for these badges was so strong that the students had to place a second order from the supplier, as they sold out a lot sooner than expected," the team's business studies teacher, Ciarán O'Rodaigh, said. Convenience chain Mace, which sponsored the awards, is now considering stocking the product.

On top of the satisfaction of setting up a profitable business venture, the 14 students on the winning team will jet off to the town of El Prat de Llobregat near Barcelona next month on a study trip to see how Spanish entrepreneurs run their businesses.

Some 35 county enterprise boards around the State run regional Student Enterprise Programmes, and will submit their finalists to a national competition this May. In total, these county enterprise boards pour roughly €350,000 a year into the programme. But what is the logic behind making an investment of this magnitude in student mini-businesses?

"Our aim is to encourage these young entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses in the future and, judging from their business ideas, they clearly have the aptitude and ambition to achieve this," says Oisín Geoghegan, who is chief executive of the Fingal County Enterprise Board, and is also involved in the student programme at a national level.

"We [as county enterprise boards] have a role of trying to help create an entrepreneurial culture in Ireland," he continues. "As part of this, we try to get in at a fairly young age to kids who are in school to have them thinking positively of entrepreneurship and self-employment. It's to turn the psyche into one where entrepreneurship and people who want to set up businesses are thought of in a positive light.

"To build a successful business in Ireland today, companies of all sizes must continuously innovate," he says. "Although our young entrepreneurs are still in secondary school, they understand this and have come up with genuinely innovative products and services."

Geoghegan says that last year's Small Business Forum recognised the importance of developing indigenous business - and an enterprise culture - in Ireland.

"They very strongly recommended that more resources would reach enterprise in education," he says. On the strength of these recommendations, Fingal County Enterprise Board received additional funding this year, which meant it was able to double the number of schools involved in the programme to 10 and the number of students involved to 400.

"If every school made this available, there is no doubt that it would have a huge impact in the long term," says Geoghegan.