In the context of the budget, there has been a lot of talk about stimuli and incentives for various sectors. This morning I heard about a report from Europe on the membership of boards, particularly the level of female membership.

There might be a necessity for some incentive or some measure to encourage boards to have a greater proportion of women on them. I am not somebody who flies the gender equality flag and, traditionally, I was not a fan of quotas, but there clearly is a problem because only 15.8% of board members of the largest companies in the 27 EU member states are women. Ireland is below average and the percentage is growing at a much slower rate than in other states; therefore, it is clear some intervention may be required.

In addition, there are many economic advantages. According to a Credit Suisse report which I read when researching this issue, companies with at least one woman on their board had outperformed the stocks of companies with no women on their boards by 26% in the past six years. As women also control 70% of global consumer spending decisions, there would be advantages to having boards mirror the market. The European Commission is considering proposals to introduce gender quotas on boards of up to 40% by 2020. While I am not a huge fan of gender quotas, we should certainly look at this area in an effort to improve our ratings.