It is Ms Bernadette Coyne, managing director of Research Solutions', first foray into Dublin city centre in two weeks, and she's just come from a meeting with a client. Her new office in Baldonnel business park is a 10-minute drive from home, so if she has to come into the city centre, she tries to arrange all her city meetings in the one day.

It's a far cry from the 40 hours a month she used to spend travelling from her Johnstown, Co Kildare home to the St Stephen's Green offices where she used to work. Since 33-year-old Ms Coyne and her business partner Ms Lorraine O'Rahilly, departed Lansdowne Market Research to set up Research Solutions, in August, life has been a lot easier.

The birth of her second child, Sally Anne, 18 months ago, was the catalyst. After she came back to work Ms Coyne realised something had to give. "It just got longer and longer, getting into town, getting home, organising childcare, the job got bigger. . . I just thought `what am I doing all this for. I'm trekking into town. I've two small kids'."

Because of the nature of the work she felt she could do it as a freelance or "set up a smaller scale company, closer to home, with more flexibility, where I could dictate long-term whether I could ease back".

So Ms Coyne set up a new consultancy-based research agency with Ms O'Rahilly, who lives in Kilcullen and has a child the same age as Ms Coyne's fouryear-old, David. The fact that both women are "dualists", who can both turn their hand to either qualitative or quantitative projects, was a key factor in the partnership.

Although they were well paid in Lansdowne and were giving up a job with a lot of perks, it was the quality of life that drove them. Ms Coyne can drop her son off to playschool at 9.20 a.m. and be in the office 10 minutes later. Three evenings she's home before six and one evening she works late - but is home by seven. She has more time at home as a result.

The transition to the new business with her secretary of three years from Lansdowne and Ms O'Rahilly, was seamless. "One week we were in Lansdowne and one week we were out on our own and there was this sort of `can do' attitude."

Research Solutions still hasn't sent a letter out to clients. Clients phoned Lansdowne, found out Ms Coyne and Ms O'Rahilly had left and followed them. She insists, they didn't initiate contact with their Lansdowne clients. Because of the amount of business the company was getting, she had to rapidly recruit, some staff followed from Lansdowne, others were headhunted. Some moved for less money. They can't buy staff - money and title can't improve quality of life. She is now seeking a senior research executive and a senior director to add to her seven-strong all-female team.

The new buzzword, category management, is something Research Solutions is strong on. "The fight for share of purse is now happening in the store. In the past everything was bombarded with advertising."

Increasingly it's what happens at the point of purchase that is the most important and this area of research she says has only started in Ireland in the last three years. "It's at a crescendo at the moment. You're not really with it unless you've done a category management project and a category management involves qualitative and quantitative research. It's essential. You can't do a category plan without it."

Research Solutions clients include Beamish & Crawford, Eircell and Coca Cola. The company is completing a qualitative consultancy project for Coca Cola Romania and Croatia because research in the region is at an early stage; analysis has to be done by an outside company.

Research Solutions competes against UK companies for such projects, because nobody else is doing it in Ireland. For the company, "it's international kudos."

From Rhode, Co Offaly, and a family of eight girls, six who are teacher's, it was assumed naturally that Ms Coyne, the daughter of a farmer, would also become a teacher. After completing her geography, maths and sociology arts degree in Maynooth, she did the "HDip".

But as with her 1980s contemporaries she emigrated to England, and despite her qualifications, ended up working in the warehouse department of Harrods, putting stock on pallets. When Ms Coyne was 21 she started a marketing degree at night and following that she got a graduate placement, with a publishing company, selling advertising space.

After spending a year sending off applications for a position as a trainee in the big research companies, she got into Pegram Walters Associates and worked her way up for six years before returning to Ireland and joining Lansdowne as associate director. During her six and a half years with the St Stephen's Green-based company, she was director four years and team leader for nearly three years, managing to fit in a stint as vice-chairman of the Marketing Society from 1998-99 and chairman of the same from 1999-2000.

While in London Ms Coyne also lectured on the marketing course for the Chartered Institute of Marketing for four years.

However, it was only recently that the research industry took off; it was static right though the 70s and 80s, and according to Ms Coyne "there were the four big companies and they earned a living, but there wasn't any huge growth. It was really in the 90s that it started to take off. It was very gradual in the early 90s and then in the last five years, with the Celtic Tiger it's taken off."

It's all tied up, she explains, as brands get more money, more is spent on advertising and people have more money to buy more products. "All the marketing stuff impacts on the research."

There was definitely a gap in market, she says, as it's been 20 years since a company was set up in Ireland. "There has actually been a consolidation of research companies because MRBI have merged with Taylor Nelson, whereas before you had AGB, MRBI, Lansdowne, IMS, B&A. Because they merged, then you were down to four. There was actually consolidation in a market that was expanding rapidly."

Allied to that was clients were getting more sophisticated, their needs were getting more sophisticated. Customers looking for qualitative research were looking for category management, more in-depth analysis and more consultancy from research. That was the niche Ms Coyne and Ms O'Rahilly had carved in Lansdowne, although the main body of business for Lansdowne was quantitative research.

"We felt we were servicing this need within a bigger company and if you took it out of the big company, it wasn't like it was going to be serviced elsewhere." In the UK, she says, "when the market took off there was massive fragmentation. It suddenly went from 50 companies to 120 companies," and it was consultants like herself, who went out on their own.

In Ireland there was no company that provided just added value consultancy-based research. In reality Research Solutions provides added value to the lives of those working there, Ms Coyne claims. "The running joke is you are working for Research Solutions for Love, Loyalty and Location - the three L's because location is huge, loyalty will be a good factor."

Because it is predominantly women in research, and the industry has trebled in the last five years Ms Coyne says women are coming up through the ranks who "get into a life stage where they start having kids and then you're left with this dilemma do you keep moving up the ranks working 60 hours a week or do you move elsewhere.

"It's people reaching the wall of the Celtic Tiger, commuting," she explains. She believes people will work harder if they know they have a day off. "My ideal scenario is to have everyone on a four-day week. You get more out of people, you get more commitment. If they're happier they work better. They really will."