James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairperson and welcome everybody from Enterprise Ireland to the committee this morning. Generally, I have been monitoring its work and it is quite good.

On the embassy point, and cohabiting, it is a great idea because it gives Enterprise Ireland that opportunity to work closely with the ambassadors and open up doors in countries where it might not be so easy to do so. That is a clever idea.

In relation to the seed and venture capital scheme, obviously, there is a significant amount of capital. According to the 2021 figures, the value of that stood at approximately €400 million. The world economy has moved from a situation two or three years ago. Even during the pandemic, angel investing was quite popular. Venture capital firms were flying investment into new businesses that were trying to get established with the hope of going on to become unicorns. It was quite a popular theory. In the past six months, there has been a bit of a crisis in that pattern. In terms of the risk factors as of today, what are Mr. Clancy's thoughts on the value of the investments that Enterprise Ireland would have had as per the 2021 book value and what are the major risks? From the outside looking in, it seems to be a troublesome period for a lot of start-ups, and particularly ones that one would have felt two or three years ago would go on and become potentially multi-million euro or, indeed, billion euro businesses. There seems to be a serious shaking on the foundations that we would have had a few years ago. I might open up on that one, particularly pertaining to the investments that Enterprise Ireland currently has.