What have Oscar Wilde, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair got in common? The answer is they are all public speakers.

Irish playwright Wilde was one of the first well-known public speakers back in the 1880s when he travelled around the US giving lectures about his poetry. Former US president Bill Clinton is reported to have earned €7.4 million last year from public speaking, while former British prime minister Tony Blair is currently considered to be one of the hottest potential public speakers all agencies are desperate to get on their books.

"Conference attendees are no longer happy with a day out of the office and a nice lunch," says Mary Menton, director of the London Speaker Bureau, who has recently opened an office in Dublin.

"What matters these days is the quality of the speaker."

With this very fact in mind, along with the lucrative nature of the business (the UK public-speaking market is estimated to be worth about £400 million or €590 million), the London Speaker Bureau has decided to tap into the Irish market.

While the industry is still small here - it is estimated to be worth about €20 million - it is growing fast, according to Menton, who estimates she is sourcing about 500 individual speakers a year.

Menton, who runs the Irish operation on her own with the administrative support of the London office, says that, while things have been building over the past year, business has really taken off in the last six months.

"The main thing has been word of mouth," she says. "We have got a lot of new business through referrals.

"While many people want a well-known name or face to speak at their conference or event, the most important thing is actually to ensure you get the person with the most relevant experience," she says, adding that it can take up to three months to agree a suitable speaker with a client.

"What you want is a person that can share their knowledge with the people they are addressing."

And at between $2,000 (€1,450) and $60,000 a time, depending on the speaker's prominence and knowledge, it is important to ensure that conference and event organisers are getting the right person.

According to Menton, the options in Ireland are vast.

"It is hard to get prominent businessmen and politicians while they are still in office, but there are many others who have valuable knowledge to pass on," she says, adding that several well-known Irish personalities such as Albert Reynolds, Mary Robinson and John Bruton have expressed an interest in signing up to the bureau.

Currently on the Irish books are names such as Irish-born British businessman Sir Gerry Robinson and champion jockey Richard Dunwoody.

Speakers from all over the world can be sourced through the London Speaker Bureau's network of offices in Paris, Frankfurt, Boston and Hong Kong. Together, the offices have about 4,500 speakers on the database.

As well as business-related speakers such as the innovation guru Charles Leadbeater (reputedly both Tony Blair and Bill Gates's favourite corporate thinker), companies or event organisers can sign up speakers with different areas of expertise.

These include Tim Berners Lee, the investor of the internet; the musician-turned-Third-World-campaigner Bob Geldof; and Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

According to Menton, on average, about 20 per cent of a conference's budget is spent on the speaker.

However, at a conference, where the speaker is the draw, this could rise to as much as 60 per cent of the total budget.

"For an internal conference, having a high-quality speaker is a demonstration of the management's commitment to their staff," she says.

Having the right speaker for the event can make the difference between attendees taking the advice given on board and forgetting the event completely, she adds.