It began as a casual chat in the school playground while waiting to pick up their children. Deirdre O'Driscoll (46) was there to pick up Chloe (5), and Derek McArdle (51) had come for Dara (4). Several kitchen-table chats later, online recruitment agency Irishjobshare.com was born.

The brainchild of single parent O'Driscoll, who arrived back in Ireland 18 months ago with two children and two suitcases, Irishjobshare.com came about when she was faced with the choice of going back into a mainstream professional job or launching a business of her own. When she realised she would need to put in 100 hours a week to start her own business, she concluded that what she needed to do as a single parent was to job share. "I needed to be an entrepreneur on a job-sharing basis," she says. She realised there was nobody out there to tell anyone who wanted to job share how to go about it. "I said jokingly to someone one day that I should develop a business in job-share recruitment." The reaction, she says, was phenomenal.

O'Driscoll chatted about it with McArdle, father of her five-year-old's best friend, and a business was born. "We're two parents who have seen a gap in the market," says O'Driscoll. "We are in our own way going to job share as entrepreneurs."

Key to the success of irishjobshare.com are O'Driscoll and McArdle's similar life circumstances: O'Driscoll, who has lived in the US and Paris, returned to Ireland with Chloe (5) and Ulysses (10) 18 months ago after she separated from her husband; Scottish-born McArdle moved to Ireland with his Irish wife Valerie, who works fulltime, two years ago to take care of Dara (4) and Kirsty (9). Their service is free to those who want to job share. So far they've had 50 enquiries. They expect it will be only a matter of months before Irishjobshare.com is in full swing and placing candidates in employment. It's all about matching supply with demand, they say, and it differs from other recruitment agencies because a person's desire to job share and not his or her occupation is what matters.

At the Irishjobshare.com information sessions, everybody has a different story to tell, a different reason to job share. So far, they are all women, with the exception of one male employer who identified job sharing as the only way to hold onto employees.

"Job share equals flexible arrangements," the duo tells their audience. It also helps the economy by getting more people into the workforce and can also mean the difference between two happy employees and one disgruntled one. An important point made at the information sessions is job sharing is not casual. "It's not part-time. It's permanent part-time and pensionable. There are income tax advantages too: employees go from 100 per cent to 66 per cent salary."

O'Driscoll and McArdle are adamant that job sharing is not just for housewives. House husbands, retired people, people with disabilities and workers who would like more control over their working lives all come under the Irishjobshare.com umbrella. It is also suitable for students who can gain experience while studying, and for young people just back from abroad: "people who haven't finally decided which direction they are going to go."

Irishjobshare.com, currently funded out of the founders' personal finances, has developed a momentum of its own, moving faster than the grant-aid procedure. On September 1st, they launched a free phone number and website. Already, they have held a number of information sessions in the Dublin area, something that will become a monthly occurrence. According to O'Driscoll: "The response has been overwhelmingly positive."

Irishjobshare.com's primary aim is to persuade employers in the private sector of the benefits of job sharing by providing a qualified pool of new candidates to fill vacancies across the board. If they achieve that aim, a certain two five-year-old friends could find themselves being picked up from school by two considerably richer parents.

Website at www.irishjob share.com; e-mail to answers@irishjobshare.com; tel: 1800-203040. Forthcoming information sessions: tomorrow, Clontarf Caste. 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m.; Wednesday, Bewleys Hotel, Newland's Cross, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m.