A new daily tabloid is set to be launched in Dublin backed by £1m of investment from the Archant group.

The management team behind the new title, the mid-market Dublin Daily, has this week finalised its £2.6m launch funding package with Archant as the largest single shareholder, taking a 20 per cent stake.

Archant recently secured approval from its shareholders to increase its borrowing limit to £270m, a step that allows it to move quickly when investment opportunities arise.

The new 64-page paper will focus on Dublin news, issues, entertainment and sport. It will be metropolitan in flavour, designed to appeal equally to women and men.

Target circulation after two years is set at 33,000 and the company is now recruiting for its 40 staff.

The editor will be former Gaelic football star Liam Hayes, who was founding editor of the Ireland on Sunday newspaper.

Colm Grealy, chief executive officer of the operating company founded Ireland’s first Internet Service Provider, Ireland On-Line and was former chief executive of Digiserve Ltd, publisher of online.ie. Dublin Daily will benefit from services and partnerships established by Digiserve.

Archant chief executive John Fry (pictured) said: “This is an important step for Archant. It is our first involvement in Ireland and it is a market that we have been looking at for some time.

“We believe Dublin offers interesting opportunities that fit well with our plans to develop our community-based publishing interests.

“Dublin Daily is an attractive product, driven by a visionary and committed management team and produced on state-of-the-art technology that brings the cost efficiencies of internet publishing to newspapers.”

Colm Grealy said: “We are producing a newspaper with none of the legacies of our competitors: not that comparable products exist in the current market. We will take readers from some of the existing products but we believe we will also grow the market substantially.”

Editor Liam Hayes added: “The rationale for the launch of Dublin Daily is very clear when you consider that this is the only capital city in Europe without its own daily newspaper …it makes absolute sense to target Dublin as a city.”

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