Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Annual Report 2014: Enterprise Ireland

1:30 pm

Mr. Niall O'Donnellan:

We had a workshop with the mentors regarding their sense of what was the best way to do that and there was quite a debate around the topic. Some mentors were open to that but many of them were cautious. They felt that rather than just being available to everybody who wanted to access to them, they needed a broker in place to select them. Currently, the model is the broker model. There is something about looking at other options. Office hours is a particular issue in the US, for example, and it is something we need to look at as part of our approach and that of the LEOs. There are other options, therefore, that we need to look at. We are not saying this is the final word on it. We need to learn from what is being piloted currently and then build on it.