Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the witnesses. In 2014, I had the privilege of publishing what I think was Ireland's first entrepreneurship strategy. The ambition was to make entrepreneurship and national ambition a core part of what we sought to be. Everything that has happened since underlines the importance of such an approach.

As I recall, even in the most dismal period, during the five years of the deepest crash, we still had 12,000 start-ups each year. Without them, there would have been 100,000 more jobs lost in that difficult period. The importance of start-ups cannot be underestimated. At that time, two thirds of new jobs in the Irish economy came from start-ups in the first five years of their existence. I suspect that has not changed much since. It is important to emphasise the importance of this.

If they were starting out today, would the Collison brothers still have to leave Ireland to set up Stripe? Would it be possible to see a company of that ambition start in Ireland today? What are the factors that influence the exit choice? Perhaps Mr. Ashmore has examples of companies that got away, that we would have liked to have retained. What ingredients were missing in those cases?

Regarding the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, is there anything for us to learn from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, SVB? I know it was gaming in the bonds market rather than start-ups that seems to have killed it but it will presumably put a bit of a cloud over the start-up environment in the US. Do we need to think about what that entails?

I am interested to hear what the opinion of the witnesses from Scale Ireland on the impact of Knowledge Transfer Ireland, which was one of the innovations that tried to build a bridge between our research community, all of which, pretty much, is now in universities, and start-ups. Has that lived up to its promise?

For the witnesses from ISIF, we are making massive investment in broadband and the idea is to reach into every community even very rural areas. Should we be looking at specific funds to exploit that asset to spawn start-ups? It would be a big gamble. No other European country is doing it. Should we have a dedicated fund and a strategy for it?

My last question is in relation to those who are not "gazelles". Of its type, that is, a State body dedicated to encouraging business, Enterprise Ireland is probably one of the biggest investors in start-ups in the world. However, what about the non "gazelles", the businesses that are not going to become the Stripes of the future? What is the environment like for them?