Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Female Entrepreneurship, Women in Tech Industries, Skills Needs and Balanced Regional Development: (Resumed) Discussion

1:30 pm

Ms Orla Rimmington:

We have five female CEOs in our portfolio at the moment, so the percentage of women we are supporting is around 6%, which is the industry average. That would probably be high in Ireland. The good news is that, as I said in the presentation, Enterprise Ireland is making great strides with regard to female entrepreneurship. The emphasis that has been put on this issue is building momentum and we just need to keep that up. From speaking with Enterprise Ireland, I know that 84% of the women it funded last year were female tech entrepreneurs. That is really positive.