Drew Wiggan (Dowlers) and Alma Kinnear (Kiss & Crust) meet Minister Arlene Foster at the FSB meeting in the Killyhevlin hotel
THE NORTH’S enterprise minister, Arlene Foster, speaking to a Summer School in Enniskillen, said female entrepreneurship remains a vast reserve of untapped potential.
She said women are still the largest under-represented group when it comes to enterprise in Northern Ireland.
She commented: “Despite the level of female entrepreneurship rising to a record high in 2011, we continue to have the lowest ratio of female to male entrepreneurial activity rate (38%), and we are 10% lower than the UK as a whole.
This ratio corresponds, roughly, with the percentage of female clients (32 per cent) in the business plans of Fermanagh Enterprise Ltd.
A spokesman explained that this was a flexible figure: “It depends on who comes in to us.
“If you were to speak to us in a couple of weeks’ time, it would have changed a wee bit, but, it’s probably around one-third.”
But, she said it was possible the ratio of females was greater in the volume inquiries they received.
Mrs Foster, who was speaking at the Clinton Centre International Summer School in Enniskillen, described female business leaders as ‘role models who can inspire the next generation’.
“We are all aware of the contribution women make to our economy, whether as business leaders, business people or in politics.”
She explained that her Executive’s Economic Strategy set out the steps needed to take to grow the private sector and improve the north’s economic competitiveness.
She stated: “We need to encourage a greater number of people to start new, innovative, globally focused businesses and Invest Northern Ireland’s recently launched Regional Start Initiative aims to do just that.
One female businesswoman who has shown the way is Alma Kinnear, who operates the Kissin Crust sandwich bar and coffee shop in Lisnaskea.
It has been on the go for the past 10 years. It employs 13 staff, full and part-time. Mrs Kinnear has served three terms as president of Lisnaskea Chamber of Commerce.
Why did she branch out on her own?
“I suppose I had been doing this kind of work for a fairly long time and I realised if I wanted to do something on my own, it would have to be at the right time, when I had the energy and that, if you had full confidence in it that, hopefully it would be successful.”
However, her advice to would-be entrepreneurs is to forget about, ‘the flashy car outside the door’.
“A job like this entails a lot of hours and a lot of work, and you can forget about wages at the start. Everything has to go to pay overheads.”
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