Ms Orla Rimmington:

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it on the issue of female entrepreneurship, women in the tech industry, skills needs and balanced regional development of entrepreneurial hubs. We appreciate that the committee is highlighting these important issues, which go overlooked too often.

I am a partner with Kernel Capital, a venture capital firm with offices in Cork, Dublin and Belfast, managing the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital venture funds, which are one of the largest and most active sources of equity finance for technology companies on the island of Ireland. I am joined by my colleagues Ms Denise Sidhu, finance director and partner, and Ms Jayne Brady, partner. Our backgrounds are in computer science, finance and engineering, respectively. Kernel has a proactive approach to funding women in business, enabled by the fact that three of the six partners in our firm are female. We do not back a company because it has a female founder or CEO, but we know from experience that female founders and CEOs can create and run great businesses.

Under the leadership of Enterprise Ireland’s first female CEO, Ms Julie Sinnamon, alongside her colleague Ms Jean O’Sullivan, great strides have been made in driving female entrepreneurship in Ireland. In 2014, almost one in every four companies backed by Enterprise Ireland were led by females, an increase from every one in ten in 2012. In addition, we have seen a welcome boost in female-focused startup accelerators and business mentoring programmes pioneered by the likes of Paula Fitzsimmons from Cork Institute of Technology, the DCU Ryan Academy and the National Digital Research Centre, NDRC. However, the reality is that female entrepreneurial potential is still not being tapped to its fullest. It is still a male-dominated space, with a disproportionately low level of women becoming entrepreneurs in Ireland. Research in the US has revealed that private technology companies led by women achieve a 35% higher return on investment than those owned by men. Women are also proving to be better at managing their investment money once they get it. In contrast, men are 40% more likely to receive funding for their new ventures than those led by women, with only 7% of venture capital money flowing into female-owned businesses, according to MIT. The picture in Ireland is similar, and I am keenly aware of this because I meet so many courageous founders every day, but not enough of them are women. I am delighted that we have five great female founders in our portfolio and we are actively seeking to back more of Ireland's most promising female entrepreneurs.

Not only is it important to encourage female entrepreneurs, it is also important to encourage females in senior executive roles, particularly finance and engineering. Female representation on boards of directors is also very important. It would be great if our major indigenous companies and multinationals encouraged and possibly incentivised their senior female executives to mentor and take non-executive roles in early-stage companies. In order to increase the scale of female senior-level engagement, it is important that we create a favourable environment for female-headed enterprises in Ireland and proactively support women to set up businesses. Being an entrepreneur is hard, but no career worth having is easy. We need to go a step further and consider support programmes that will suit family schedules and incorporate child care.

Raising the profile of our female entrepreneur role models in Ireland and recognising and celebrating their achievements is also essential. According to research conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, women are five times more likely to set up their own business as a result of meeting other women entrepreneurs. The private sector must be encouraged to build upon the platform provided by Enterprise Ireland, and others such as Bord Bia, so that our female entrepreneur role models can share their insight with the next generation of female leaders and convey the benefits of entrepreneurship, such as flexible work hours, which can pay dividends on the family side.

Overall, it is important to point out that venture capital, along with everything else, is a people game. We invest in intelligent people and reference them from our network, which is a key factor in the industry. People group with people who are similar to themselves, and female investors are more likely to come across opportunities to invest in females. Therefore, it is imperative that we proactively encourage women to develop and maintain active networks. From a venture capital perspective, we also need to see more female CEOs building companies across all sectors, not just where they have a distinct advantage over their male counterparts. Greater female participation in science, technology, engineering and maths, STEM, would address skills shortages and spur innovation and tech entrepreneurship in Ireland. Currently, far more male graduates emerge from STEM college courses than female, and only one in four people working in STEM in Ireland are women. STEM careers are already shaping our future and we need to encourage more young women to get involved in STEM at an early stage. My colleague Ms Jayne Brady will discuss skills needs in more detail.