They call themselves the Wired Geese. Just before Christmas, a group of Irish technology companies with offices in France got together in Paris's oldest bistro to compare notes on doing business here. A small but growing band of mainly sales and marketing types, they are finding the continent's second-largest technology market too tempting to ignore.

Sometimes overlooked by Irish companies because it is not English speaking and has a reputation for administrative difficulty, France is tempting. It has the second largest European economy after Germany despite years of economic sluggishness, and the level of Irish technology exports to France is growing fast. There are 40 Irish companies here, not including the food-related sector.

Mr Leo McAdams, information technology marketing adviser with Enterprise Ireland in Paris, said that in his area "1998 was an incredible year".

Electronics exports from Ireland to France grew by 84 per cent to £58 million (#73.64 million), while telecommunications exports grew 80 per cent to £28 million. He predicts more than another 50 per cent growth for these in 1999, as well as continued growth of around 25 per cent for software exports, which last year stood at £12 million.

At present there are 12 companies in these sectors, either established or in the process of establishing offices in France, he said. Enterprise Ireland offers support to Irish companies and multinationals which have marketing responsibility based in Ireland.

One Irish company well used to the French system is Limerick-based Ashling Microsystems, which makes micro-controller emulators for use in the electronics industry. Founded in 1985, the company opened a French office 10 years ago because its product's complexity meant training distributors and resellers took too long, according to French area sales manager Ms Roisin O'Keeffe.

Ms O'Keeffe said it was "important to be local and to understand the French way of doing business", which she said included promptness, politeness, and subtlety, while avoiding false promises. "I've found it very, very pleasant to do business in France," she said, adding there were, however, numerous administrative hurdles.

On the administrative front she advised using French accountants or lawyers successfully to weave through paperwork, deadlines and the problems of knowing what had to be done.

Another Irish firm, Transaction Network Services Ltd (TNS), took a different route, incorporating a company here just before Christmas. The French company will be a subsidiary of the Dublin-based company, which in turn is a holding company for its Virginia-based parent. The company, whose core business is the provision of network services for processing plastic-card transactions, has already set up in Sweden, and will do likewise in Germany to take advantage of European telecommunications deregulation.

However, TNS's Irish managing director, Mr Pat Kirby, has been bruised by what he called "horrendous" French bureaucracy. He said it took six months to get the company incorporated, despite the assistance of a leading French legal firm, calling it "by far the worst experience" when compared to setting up elsewhere. Problems such as being asked for triplicate copies of passports and having one returned because there was a blot on a page added weeks to a project, he said, while the final mound of paperwork took two hours to sign.

"France is the number one country not to deal with a start-up company," Mr Kirby lamented, saying that it was a barrier to industrial progress and that however difficult it was for him, a fellow EU member, his US colleagues found it "just crazy".

Mr McAdams admitted France's administrative side could be difficult, but said with Enterprise Ireland assistance, opening an office here - as distinct to incorporating a company - involved only 10 per cent of the administration. Mr Kirby said he didn't use Enterprise Ireland's services in France, but expected he would in Germany.

Mr McAdams dismissed as cliched any idea that France was a difficult market or that the French were nationalistic when it came to business, and said the bottom line was that business went well here for Irish companies. He cited the example of pre-paid phonecard company, Torc Telecom, which only opened a Paris office last September, but which has already increased its staff to 10. In the last year, the number of Irish software companies with a direct presence here doubled, he said, with four new arrivals including TNS. Iona Technologies, which develops middleware for use by other software companies, took the plunge from a virtual office (which routed to the Dublin office) to a real one, while Dublin-based Softech Telecom, which develops call accounting systems, opened an office in November. Dun Laoghaire-based Euristix, which develops telecommunications software, is currently in the process of setting up in Paris.

Softech's area sales manager, Mr Paul Maguire (who claims credit for the term Wired Geese), echoed the sentiment that while the administrative side was difficult, Europe's second-largest telecommunications market just couldn't be ignored. "You have to be on the spot to do business in this country," he said, adding cheerfully that sales were already coming in.

Iona's regional sales manager, Mr Fergal McDonnell, said French revenues had so far exceeded expectation. According to him, Iona opened here because customers in the telecommunications, military and aerospace industries were too technically demanding for local resellers. He said staff numbers were expected to rise from five to "double figures" by mid-1999.

With the thriving Irish technology sector continuing to mature and to look to new markets, and with the euro simplifying trade with much of continental Europe, the prospects look bright for continued flights of Wired Geese.

Administrative difficulties there may be, but in the words of TNS's Mr Kirby, the prize is so big in France that he would "crawl through barbed wire" to establish here.

Eoin Licken can be reached at elicken@irish-times.ie