Hildegarde Naughton (Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for attending. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2013 stated that men are 1.9 times more likely to be at the start-up entrepreneurship stage. If we want to encourage women into business and start-ups, there are two strands. First is the initial strand of education. I agree that primary school is the key time to encourage young girls to get interested in entrepreneurship. I would be interested to know from the witnesses how that should be approached from a teaching perspective. One would have to go into the teacher training colleges. If one is going to do this, one will have to approach it in a particular way and not only through the STEM subjects. The second strand is where women are already in the workforce where the perennial issue is that of child care. Reference was made to mentoring and the buddy system, which is all very good, but child care and its cost falls back on women. I would be very interested to know what the witnesses feel the State could do. It may be an obvious question but how to empower women and support them as entrepreneurs needs must be spelled out.

What is the experience of interaction with local enterprise offices? How are they working and what do the witnesses feel can be done to improve them, if anything?