If this is the second youth of Paul McGuinness, it looks different to the one that involved hanging around the Dandelion Market hustling gigs for some gangly adolescents named U2. He is still marketing talent to the 13 to 25 age group, but this time around he has spreadsheets and MRBI research polls.

Now Mr McGuinness's company, Principle Management, is part of the consortium behind Pulse, which on Monday hopes to persuade the IRTC to award it a radio licence for Dublin. The station will air the music being played in the capital's dance clubs, its techno-beat aimed at a very different market than the adult segment dominated by the RTE channels.

Part of the attraction of each new generation of musical taste is surely that it alienates teenagers' parents, but even at 48, Mr McGuinness claims to like what he heard on Pulse when it was a pirate.

"Oh yes. I have very broad taste in music, and without knowing what it was about, Pulse was always on in my car. I like any music that is good music," he says. "In terms of who is good out there. . . there are some guys from Belfast, called Basic, they play in The Kitchen, and they are talented. They play electronic instruments and samplers."

Of course there are three other creditable contenders for the licence, including one bid assisted by U2 guitarist The Edge, and another involving the band's apparently estranged accountant, Mr Ossie Kilkenny. None of this has dampened the confidence of Mr McGuinness.

"The pop music and talk mixed together on FM104, 98FM, 2FM is very bland, very middle-aged, and younger people who go out clubbing are not being catered for whatsoever. Pulse, as a pirate, was supplying that and reaching a very large audience."

He has the charts to back up the assertion - MRBI research shows that in the 13 to 19 age category, Pulse was the third most popular station in Dublin, just behind the legal 98FM, with 31 per cent listenership. RTE's 2FM had a share of just 13 per cent.

It is a relatively slim market segment, he admits, but with the cost of putting a station on the air now so low, "narrowcasting" represents the future. It also allows advertisers target very specific groups of listeners, people that 10 years ago had little money to buy products but are now increasingly wealthy.

But has he backed an old technology, one destined to be forgotten within a decade as mobile communications bring a choice of thousands of radio stations through the Internet?

"Radio is a bit like television - and there's an old television proverb which says that people turn on the TV to see themselves," he says.

Such developments could Balkanise the advertising base for a station, he admits, but radio listeners tend to be creatures of habit, and the new station will try to establish the habit fast.

"Also, there will be Irish mixers and Irish DJs, and they will be on Pulse as they were before it went off the air, and that really is their parish pump, for those DJs who are part producer, part performer, part editor," he says.

Some talented young mixers looking for an international profile, and suddenly, running Pulse does not seem so different to guiding U2 through the shark-infested waters of the 1980s music industry.

"This is interesting - it is youth marketing, the world we are already in. We are basically backing talent here," he says. "We want to make money, but also do something with a little bit of style!"

Pulse's founders, Mr Ronan Brady and Mr Daragh O'Sullivan, were initially hesitant about applying for a licence, fearing that the station's pirate status would disqualify it from consideration. In fact, Mr McGuinness says, the IRTC has offered nothing but encouragement. Pulse went off the air some weeks ago in the run-up to its application.

The start-up cost of the venture will be around £2 million (€2.5 million), with Principle Management's 20 per cent stake coming to £400,000. And if it doesn't work out, he still has one or two irons in the fire.

Like managing U2, and Paddy Casey, and Polly Harvey, and the MyTown, the genuinely-talented boy band about to launch itself on the US market.

Also, bringing Wimbledon football team to Dublin.

"I'm having dinner with Joe Kinnear tonight - we'll swap old war stories! I still think the opportunity to bring Wimbledon to Dublin is there, but I don't think Sam Hammam [Wimbledon's current owner] can actually face it. I don't know why," he says. "Is it gone now? I don't know. . . we spent a huge amount of time on the project. The next time it comes up will probably be when Wimbledon are in danger of relegation, which might be later this year."

Another project of what he terms his "comparatively small business" is TV3, in which it has a stake through Windmill Lane. The station is doing better than projected, he says.

The company also has a "substantial" investment in The Mill, London's premier video post-production facility. To prove its number one status, Mr McGuinness brandishes the latest independent survey by the industry magazine Televisual - those working in the sector put The Mill top in every category.

Riverdance, in which the company has a stake, is also doing well. There are three versions of it touring the world at the moment.

And then there's London's arts and media magnet, the Groucho Club - "started by a bunch of women who couldn't get into the Garrick" - which he plans to bring to Dublin.

"You can imagine the property implications; we won't be making any announcement until we have the premises. But that is imminent. Then there will be a building programme. It will be great fun."

While Principle Management still owns one third of Ardmore Studios, his interest in film doesn't stop there. He and Michael Colgan have teamed up to work on a film based on Julie Parsons' book Mary, Mary.

In his spare time, he serves on the Arts Council, to which he was appointed 12 years ago by Charles Haughey. It takes up at least one full day a month, he feigns to complain: "And there is no money! It is a unique semi-state; you actually get nothing!"

But in truth, he values this public service: "When I was first appointed the arts was getting £4 million a year, this year they will receive £37 million. If I've had anything to do with increasing that number, then that is the satisfaction I get from it."