Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 March 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation
Start-up and Scaling Environment in Ireland: Discussion
Mr. Brian Caulfield:
I do not want to prejudge what proposals we might make regarding this aspect, but the nature of a smaller market, like Ireland's, is that it is difficult to support large domestic funds that are able to write these larger cheques. Domestic funds, therefore, tend to write cheques of the order of a couple of million euro. It is difficult, however, to go to the international markets unless the company is raising more than €10 million. This is what creates the gaps. ISIF has played an important role here in encouraging international funds with a larger scale of capital available to pay attention to the Irish market, to visit it and to invest time in it. This is the kind of thing we need to continue to encourage.