Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the Balance for Better Business initiative, I launched that when I was Taoiseach. At the time, I think it was a creature of the then Department of Justice and Equality but I took a personal interest in it and responsibility for it is to be transferred from that Department to my Department. I will continue to take a personal interest in the initiative. It is all about increasing the number of women serving on the boards of big companies, starting with those that are trading on the stock exchange. It came out of the work we did on State boards, on which there is now a reasonably good gender balance. Between 40% and 50% of people on State boards are women. Although that is not necessarily the case on individual boards, when one looks at them in the round, nearly 50% of board members are women now, and the majority of people appointed to State boards-----