Ireland needs an army of mentors - Alfie Kane

Alfie Kane is the chairman of the panel of judges for the David Manley Awards. To mark the launch of this year's Awards today (20th July) he says, "There’s no shortage of the entrepreneurial spirit in Ireland - but the harsh reality is that the vast majority fail. So - rather than focus on the intellectual question of ‘how to create entrepreneurs’ - let’s focus on reducing the failure rate of today’s start up companies.”

“What’s been proven to reduce failure rates for start-ups? Mentoring - the gift of time. If we had a national support structure and if every start-up was allocated a mentor, failure rates would drop dramatically. Ireland has an army of successful people who are able and willing to pass on their skills and the government needs to harness this expertise into a structured national support system. The mentor doesn’t have to be an entrepreneur – there is a wealth of managerial talent in both private and public companies. The banks and the public service departments, for example, could get mid-level management to each donate, say, a day every fortnight to mentor start-ups. This is not a new theory - we have talked about it so often – now let’s just do it,” he says. Further info on this year's awards - www.davidmanleyawards.ie