Ireland has many great entrepreneurs but, perversely, Ireland is not a great country for entrepreneurs.

The contradiction runs deeper. We were recently awarded the title of best country to run a business by ‘Forbes’ business magazine, but for a combination of reasons the Irish start-up or entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t seem to match this title.

A few international comparisons paint a clearer picture. In 2012, the international Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report highlighted the fact that Ireland had the lowest percentage of aspiring entrepreneurs, at eight per cent, of the whole of the European Union.

At that level we were close to half the average rate for the whole of the union where nearly 15pc of the adult population described themselves as aspiring entrepreneurs.

Our score for people that had actually started a new business was slightly better, but still way down the league table and way below average.

When you delve a little deeper into the culture behind these types of figures it gets a bit more confusing again. As a country we have an above average view of successful entrepreneurs compared to our European colleagues, while we judge our media to be supportive and positively disposed to covering entrepreneurs.

So why then do we dip sharply when asked if entrepreneurship is a good career choice, to a point where just four out of 10 people think that that is the case? Only one country in Europe, Hungary, had a lower assessment of entrepreneurship as a career choice. These types of figures are a real worry because two thirds of all new jobs tend to come from start-up businesses in the first five years of their existence.

If we are going to get our economy creating the jobs we need, and to build on the improvements we’ve seen in the last 12 months or so, we need to make sure we are doing everything in our power to facilitate and encourage as many new start-ups as possible.

That is why I asked Sean O’Sullivan, of ‘Dragon’s Den’ fame, to bring together a group of specialists – serial entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, tech investors, noted academics, food and services industry start-up experts – to prepare a set of recommendations for Government on how to make life a little easier, a little more supportive of entrepreneurs. I launched that report yesterday and I believe it is a superb piece of work.

As it states on the first page in the first lines, it is not a report designed to tell us how great we are, how we’re punching above our weight or how someone else is to blame for the failings in the system; it’s a rallying cry by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs and for Government to say that collectively we can make a difference and together we can improve our prospect of creating more new companies and, vitally, more new jobs for our people.

It is honest enough to say that Government cannot create entrepreneurs and start-ups, but what we can do is remove barriers that stop or delay them happening. It has over 60 recommendations, some for Government and others for the existing community of entrepreneurs, broken into categories that target broader issues like the culture and values that support start-ups and others with very specific suggestions on changing the tax code or education system to help encourage more start-ups.

There are clever proposals on creating more co-working spaces for new entrepreneurs and innovative thinking on new sources of finance for small business that have a lot of merit. But then, the quality of the work shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the ideas are coming from those who have been there and created so many successful firms.

In my job I’m lucky to meet some of our best and brightest entrepreneurial pioneers who are the real drivers of the recovery we are beginning to experience; like Eishtec in Waterford, run by Irish managers from the closed Talk Talk facility who two years ago employed nine people and today are on course to employ 900, or Glen Dimplex, an Irish success story that researches and manufactures its new heating systems right here in Ireland for a global audience.

Similarly, on a recent trade mission to the Gulf I was struck by the ingenuity of many of the firms, like Combilift from Monaghan who make fork-lift trucks and sell them all over the world, or Slainte Healthcare who are entering new markets with their innovative healthcare solutions. All are Irish owned and founded and display the best of what we have to offer.

In an ever more competitive global marketplace we need to find more Eishtecs, Combilifts and Slainte Healthcares if we are to achieve the ambitious targets we have for our country. O’Sullivan’s report provides us with many of the signposts we need to help us achieve those goals. Implementing as many of them as we can, as quickly as we can is a priority for this year and succeeding years.

Richard Bruton is Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Irish Independent

www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/we-need-to-rediscover-entrepreneurial-spirit-29945815.html