Ms Julie Sinnamon:

I thank the committee for inviting me to speak on female entrepreneurship, the skills needs of our clients and our role in regional development. I am joined by my colleagues, whom the Chairman introduced, who work in the relevant areas in Enterprise Ireland.

Enterprise Ireland's objective is to start and grow world-class Irish enterprises, targeting global markets. For companies to maximise job creation, they need to grow their sales, and for a small economy like ours growth in export sales is crucial. Achieving this objective will require a major drive for scale across all of our clients. Recognising the diversity of the Enterprise Ireland client base, our supports are tailored to reflect each company's stage of development. This ensures all of our clients, from entrepreneurs and start-ups, to exporting SMEs and large companies, can access the appropriate supports to help them to scale and grow. I propose to take members briefly through our clients' impressive employment performance in 2014 before presenting our key achievements and plans in the specific areas identified for today's discussion, after which my colleagues and I will respond to any questions members may have.

Enterprise Ireland client companies continue to see year on year jobs growth, and in 2014 they created 8,476 new jobs which was the highest net gain in the history of the agency. This impressive employment growth demonstrates the direct impact that increasing exports has on jobs in Ireland.

Enterprise Ireland-supported companies directly provide employment for 180,072 people, comprising 156,202 full-time and 23,870 part-time workers. In terms of their overall contribution to the economy, Enterprise Ireland's clients account for more than €20 billion in expenditure in the economy and support more than 300,000 jobs directly and indirectly, equating to 16% of the total workforce.

The outlook for new job creation in 2015 is positive and Enterprise Ireland's focus will remain on ensuring that our clients have access to all of the necessary supports required to build on this momentum. This focus, coupled with our priority to support entrepreneurship across the regions and develop strong, export-focused, ambitious Irish companies that can win new business, will mean more jobs for Ireland during the next 12 months.

One of Enterprise Ireland's core objectives is to deepen the pool of start-ups with the potential to scale internationally. To achieve this, we need to ensure that we are working with the most ambitious and capable founders and placing them on faster growth trajectories. Traditionally, female founders have been an under-represented source of start-ups and the potential of this cohort has not been fully realised. Our aim is to harness this potential, support the creation of successful female-led international businesses and achieve great outcomes for Ireland.

Since 2012, Enterprise Ireland has developed an integrated strategy to encourage more women to start innovative businesses with high growth potential. Our work in this area is encouraged by the increased policy focus at Government level on ensuring that the under-representation of women in the start-up ecosystem and across the business community is addressed. We provide tailored supports aimed at increasing the level of female entrepreneurship. These include: highlighting strong female role models leading successful businesses; female-specific financial supports such as a competitive start fund; networking supports that recently saw the development of a web-based networking platform; and the development of female-specific development programmes, for example, Going for Growth. We have already seen a 250% increase in the number of female-led start-ups from 12 in 2011 to 43 in 2014. This includes a significant increase in the proportion of female-led high-potential start-ups, HPSUs, accounting for 18% of the total number of HPSUs compared with 7% in 2011. While this is significant progress, we need to build on it and continue to focus on this important issue.

The mix of dynamic, growing Irish companies and leading multinational companies, MNCs, in Ireland is creating an exciting pool of highly-skilled people working in innovative areas. However, a key challenge facing many of the companies that have ambitions to scale is the availability of skills. Enterprise Ireland has a clear understanding of our clients' skills needs and it is our role to work with the third level sector, Departments and other agencies to develop an appropriate response that will work to fill any gap.

In the short term, programmes attracting critical skills to Ireland are central to ensuring the continued growth of Irish companies in tech and related sectors. IT's Happening Here, an industry initiative that is supported by Enterprise Ireland, is an example of a programme that has been successful in attracting overseas talent to Ireland with clients successfully recruiting through the online portal and events. Enterprise Ireland is also a key contributor to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation-led committee that is charged with promoting Ireland internationally as a destination for high-level ICT skills. A national initiative is being developed and will be implemented as part of the 2015 Action Plan for Jobs.

Our client skills unit works with our sectoral and start-up teams to understand our clients' needs, interacts with national policy makers and skill providers to ensure that their needs are fully reflected and contributes to the development of longer term solutions that will address gaps. Areas that clients have highlighted include ICT skills, engineering and selling skills. It is important to acknowledge the considerable efforts that have been made to increase the supply of skills such as Springboard, ICT conversion courses, JobBridge and Momentum. Client feedback on these programmes and initiatives has been positive, with clients telling us that they are effective in addressing the skills gaps.

In addition to the work we do on the wider skills agenda, Enterprise Ireland has developed a number of flagship programmes focused on supporting leadership and management capabilities in Irish companies. In 2014, 246 managers participated in these programmes, with well over 1,000 participating in the past four years. Key programmes include Leadership 4 Growth, the international selling programme and Excel at Export Selling, which are designed to equip Irish companies with the necessary tools to reach their export sales potential in global markets, as well as Access Silicon Valley, a further programme.

In 2014, two new programmes were launched. First, Innovation 4 Growth was developed to meet the needs of ambitious and entrepreneurial Irish companies seeking to use innovation as a key way to unlock opportunities in the marketplace. Second, a pilot programme called Platform 4 Growth was launched which uses a blended delivery model combining online and face-to-face delivery. It means participants enjoy the traditional benefits of peer networking while also having greater flexibility to custom design a learning package by mixing and matching modules that are best suited to their specific needs.

With regard to regional development, the launch of 31 local enterprise offices in April 2014 represented a major commitment by Government to support entrepreneurship, micro enterprise and small business throughout the country. Enterprise Ireland, through its centre of excellence, provides support, training and guidance to the 31 LEOs to ensure a professional and consistent level of support is provided to all start-ups and small business. Significant progress was made during 2014. The priorities for continuing the integration process in 2015 include gathering customer and client feedback and finalising the development of local enterprise plans and metrics.

With two thirds of Enterprise Ireland's client companies located outside of Dublin, regional development is a key element of its 2014-16 strategy. Our role in this space is to drive and nurture regional enterprise all the way from an originating idea, at local level, to the high potential start-up companies taking on global markets. Our regional development supports are focused on four pillars of activity: prospecting for a pipeline of early stage start-ups and high potential start-ups; working with established clients and potential exporters in the regions to maximise job creation potential and to support internationalisation; working with the higher education sector to further strengthen the innovative capability of companies based in Ireland and support the commercialisation of research; and working with LEOs, community enterprise centres, IDA Ireland and others to enhance the ecosystem supporting enterprise in the regions.

Enterprise Ireland's regional enterprise strategies are currently in development. We are working closely with the Department as it develops a whole of government approach to regional enterprise development. The four pillar approach was piloted in the midlands in quarter 4 of last year and included a regional enterprise forum with 120 people from the public and private sector in December. The midlands strategy is nearing completion and the process will be refined and rolled out in the remaining regions this year.

On behalf of Enterprise Ireland, I thank the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, and the many Departments and agencies across the system. They are critically important in enabling us to drive the development of Irish companies. We are very proud of the record performance of our companies across the country in 2014. The level of increased employment achieved is remarkable and endorses the strategy we have embarked on to 2016.

Significant progress has been made in each of the areas being discussed today. However, it is important that we build on this success over the 2015-16 period. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our female entrepreneurship team, which is led by Ms Jean O'Sullivan, on the substantial increase that we have seen in female led start-ups since 2014. We will continue to work to fully realise the potential of this important source of start-ups.

Client feedback endorses the approach that has been taken by Enterprise Ireland and others to address the skills gaps of our clients. This is a longer term issue and we will continue to engage with the HEA and others to develop solutions that meet the needs of our clients.

Supporting balanced regional development will continue to be at the centre of Enterprise Ireland's activity. The Enterprise Ireland's centre of excellence has worked closely with the LEO network, since its establishment, providing professional and back-up support which will continue to be a major focus of our work in 2015-16.

Enterprise Ireland is keenly focused on its ongoing mission to start and grow world class Irish enterprises, targeting global markets and to move forward into 2015 with the objective of playing a central role in the implementation of the 2015 action plan which was published last week.