Ms Paula Fitzsimons:

It is my pleasure to talk to the members of the committee today about ACORNS, accelerating the creation of rural nascent start-ups, "nascent" being early stage. I will outline the background of how it was set up.

A report by the Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas, CEDRA, recommended that a rural innovation and development fund be developed to support innovative small-scale pilot initiatives that explored the diverse range of potential identified through the CEDRA process. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine provided for the setting up of that fund out of his budgets for 2015 and 2016.

A request for tenders was made through a public procurement competition for the provision of a service for the development and delivery of a tailored pilot programme to address the skills, enterprise and capability gaps of nascent female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland. The focus was on female entrepreneurs because research by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, GEM, in which I am involved, had shown that there were approximately 2.5 male early stage entrepreneurs setting up businesses to every one woman. There is a gap. Entrepreneurship in Ireland is also more focused in urban areas than rural ones. Hence, there was a focus on female entrepreneurs in rural areas. Rural areas were defined in the CEDRA report as those outside the administrative city boundaries of Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway. We applied for and, I am delighted to say, won the tender. We then developed ACORNS, which, as already stated, involves accelerating the creation of rural nascent start-ups. The initiative focused on women with businesses with fewer than two years of sales. One could be at an advanced stage with a clear understanding of what one wanted to start a new business around or one could already be trading in that new business.

Initially, we did not know whether there would be an appetite for ACORNS, but there clearly was, which is good. The team that I work with has experience in supporting female entrepreneurs. We have developed Going for Growth, which has been recognised by the OECD and the EU and has won many awards. We learned from that. We knew that peer support worked. We took the idea of placing voluntary lead entrepreneurs - people who had experience of doing this in rural Ireland - with a group of earlier stage entrepreneurs in rural Ireland. There was not just the normal role model effect, the strength of which we know from research, but also the role model effect of women who had already started businesses in rural Ireland.

We developed a structured methodology that would run over a six-month cycle with a start, middle and end and in which we would measure everything. We measured where people were when they came in and where they were at the end of the cycle. In addition, the Department was clear that it wanted all entrepreneurs to be aware of what supports were available to them, so we developed a booklet of supports, which we have on our website. We renew it every year. We have won the tender to run ACORNS three times.

It is my strong experience that entrepreneurs learn best from one another. Therefore, those who facilitate the round-table sessions are not consultants, academics or professional trainers, but entrepreneurs. They give of their time freely, so they are all volunteers. They have experienced the benefits of peer learning because they were all participants in Going for Growth. They have seen the benefits, and this is now their way of giving back. They are the backbone of the initiative. Besides being an effective initiative to run, it becomes quite efficient because they are volunteers.

We are leveraging their impact by undertaking group as opposed to one-to-one mentoring. The benefit of the group has all sorts of serendipities. It reduces the psychological isolation of the individual who is setting up, as she is meeting others like herself who are encountering the same challenges as her. Participants have the benefit of being mentored by someone who has already done it all successfully. The ACORNS lead entrepreneurs are all based in rural Ireland and drawn from all over the country. They are in Donegal, the Gaeltacht in Galway, Kerry, Wexford, the midlands, etc.

From the very beginning, we set out for participants that this was based on confidentiality, collaboration and mutual respect. Those are the hallmarks. Anything that is discussed around the table stays there. That would be a challenge for any group in some respects, but especially for a group of people who feel that their business could become public. Therefore, everything has to be confidential. The programme reduces isolation, which is not only psychological, but also locational. We set out to form participants into a strong network. They meet twice at the beginning and end of their cycles in a residential forum. I am thankful to the Department, as the way in which we have been able to structure this initiative means there is no cost to anyone involved and the residential elements are paid for. It allows participants to form tighter bonds than they might otherwise.

The initiative's outcomes are strong. We measure everything. The results are evident qualitatively and quantitatively. I could provide the committee with the results from the beginning, but it does not have all day. Instead, I will focus on the cycle that just concluded, ACORNS 3. It had positive outcomes. Some 50 people completed the cycle, or 88% overall, and all who completed it felt closer to achieving their growth goals. These figures support our belief that we are doing the right thing and people feel good about it, but we also want to know whether the programme has been effective in terms of increases in turnover, employment and exports. For example, the difficulties encountered in having rural businesses focus on export markets were mentioned.

I can provide the detailed figures, but I will show the committee the salient points now. Of the 50 who completed ACORNS 3, their combined turnover at the start of the cycle was €888,000. At the end of the cycle six months later, they had annualised sales of €1.75 million, representing a significant increase. There were eight exporters at the start of the cycle and nine new exporters by the end, representing a 112% increase. At the beginning, 77 people were employed, including those involved in the initiative. By the end, there were an extra 13 full-time jobs and 19 part-time ones. These are positive outcomes. Of the participants, 96% said that their participation brought about practical change and 100% felt nearer to achieving their ambitions, would recommend it to others and wanted a way of staying in contact with ACORNS.

With the Department's support, we have been able to offer those who go through an ACORNS cycle an opportunity for further development. They can stay, meet twice per year with a lead entrepreneur and continue to move their businesses forward. We track all of that, so we can show various increases. Participants in ACORNS 2 initially had €731,000 in turnover between them. Two years after undertaking the further development cycle with us, their turnover amounted to €1.8 million and the number of jobs involved increased from 38 to 63.

As we moved from pilot to ACORNS 2 to ACORNS 3, we wanted a means to help those who wanted to focus on the further development of their businesses. We created a community and, more than that, a new set of round-table sessions called ACORNS Plus, which are facilitated by two of my Going for Growth leads. The outcomes are stunning. The seven involved in the first ACORNS Plus round-table session, which was a pilot, came into it with a turnover of €355,000 between them. By June 2018, they had €1.5 million in turnover.

They plan to grow and stay connected.

We have just launched ACORNS 4. There was very strong interest in applying for it. The selection process has just been completed. We have offered further development to those who completed ACORNS 3 and over 80% have said they would like this. Owing to the demand to participate in ACORNS Plus round-table initiatives, which are for the community, we put two in place. It is widely recognised that it is a grassroots movement. What is happening is that people are telling one another about it. More than that, while we talk about the role models as being those who facilitate the round-table initiative, each of those who becomes a participant is in effect a role model in her family and community. The media has been very supportive and there is great interest in this.

We will represent Ireland, I am delighted to say, at the European Enterprise Awards in November. We just got word last week that, in our category, which is investing in entrepreneurial skills, we have reached the final three. We are up against initiatives from Austria and Lithuania. That is ACORNS.