Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is our intention to engage with thousands of women in this process. I could hardly be accused of discriminating against women in business because, for the first time, under my guidance we established a competitive start fund dedicated specifically to women entrepreneurs. I put €750,000 into that last year and it was massively oversubscribed. There are encouraging signs that women entrepreneurs, who were very much a minority, are becoming much more actively engaged.

What we sought to do was to move across a number of areas, such as retail, food and the entrepreneurial hub. We are going to develop each of those sections and there will be a particular dedication to looking at how we promote more women and young people in entrepreneurship, and how we spin more entrepreneurship out of our R&D investment. We are going to have a very thorough assessment of this area. I assure the Deputy we will have a very wide engagement through this process.

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