The Hays Travel owner and chair said some of the ideas now core to the business, like apprenticeships, were a result of her previous career in government.

Last year Hays took on 546 apprentices and this year 400. “There was a moment when I thought how much good could be done if you give people that second chance,” she told BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours.

She described apprenticeships as being for school leavers “almost like a second chance in a different environment for people to flourish and succeed", adding that the success of Hays Travel was "in no small part" due "to the incredible young people we employ as apprentices".

In the programme, she told how the agency, founded by late husband John, went from a first year turnover of £812 in 1980 to £2.6 billion today.

Before she joined the business, Dame Irene had her own local authority career which had culminated in a move to Whitehall, where she was director general, local government and regeneration, overseeing 353 local authorities.

Despite their different roles, she said she and late husband John had lots of discussions about the agency: “I was clearly a sounding board and sometimes more.” 

Nevertheless, she only got involved in Hays Travel in the early 1990s. “John wanted me to chair the company. I questioned the sense of that and he said he believed that would be a very good thing for the business because we didn’t always agree on everything and John believed that robust challenge was a good thing.”

Asked to give an example, she said: “I thought the development of a website was a very good thing and John did too, eventually.”

In the programme, she also covered the 2019 purchase of Thomas Cook’s 555 high-street shops. “John brought the AA Atlas and we put it on the kitchen table and circled all the areas we would like to expand into,” she said.

“Every night around the table we added more and more. We concluded we should bid for a licence to operate them all, do the due diligence during that licence period and see which ones we wanted."

She said the deal gave Hays “an opportunity to walk away from some of those branches” where there was duplication or an unfavourable location.

Twelve weeks later, the pandemic struck, with Hays having just acquired 2,000 extra staff.  “All we focused on was trying to assure those staff that were certain they were going to be made redundant. Regrettably we had to let some of them go in foreign exchange because they didn’t know how to rebook a holiday.”

She described how the couple would work all day and spend “most of the night” refreshing information about the pandemic from the FCDO and the NHS. Both took only National Minimum Wage.

The workload took its toll on John Hays, who collapsed in his office in November 2020.

Dame Irene said she received more than a thousand letters of support after John’s death. Many of these, she said, were from Cook staff. “Many of them said we will pay you back Irene, and they have.”

Asked if she had ever considered quitting, she replied: “No, not even for a second, because when you own a business you have a responsibility to the people that work in that business. 

“The last thing John would have wanted was to walk away from all of those people who were, in each of their own lives, having the same challenges that I was and let them be there without some sort of leadership and guidance and belief that we were going to get through this dreadful pandemic and we were going to be better and stronger in the future. I couldn’t do that; I couldn’t walk away.”

Hays said there was “clear evidence” of the high street’s success having just approved this year’s accounts. “This year we are even more successful and have acquired three more businesses and about 65 stores. People like to deal with people.” However, she added: “How long that will go on for, I know not.”