Written answers

Thursday, 18 October 2018

Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Gender Balance

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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14. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the guidance given to agencies under her Department's remit to ensure there is more gender balance in terms of the leadership of the companies and research projects that are funded; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42698/18]

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department strongly supports gender balance and is represented on the Government's 'Better Balance for Business Review Group'. In terms of board membership of agencies, I take a particular interest in achieving strong gender balance.

The agencies under the remit of my Department operate a range of programmes which provide funding to companies and research projects in line with their legal mandates and individual strategies.

Decisions on the funding of companies and research projects are taken by the agencies themselves, without ministerial or departmental interference, and each agency has robust procedures in place to ensure that available funding is optimally invested to help achieve their strategic goals.

My Department does not provide guidance to the agencies seeking to ensure gender balance in the leadership of companies or research projects that receive agency funding. All applications for funding received by the agencies are treated equally, regardless of the gender of the applicant, and while gender balance is encouraged, it is not generally an evaluation criterion in the assessment of applications.

The agencies have a number of initiatives in place to harness the untapped potential of female entrepreneurs and researchers. For example, Enterprise Ireland has developed an integrated strategy to encourage more women to start innovative businesses with high growth potential, and this has seen a significant increase in the female entrepreneurs and proportion of female founded High Potential Start Ups (up from 7% in 2011 to 28% in 2017). Science Foundation Ireland has published a gender strategy and operates a number of initiatives which provides a comprehensive framework for delivering actions to retain and increase the participation of excellent female researchers in STEM careers.

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