In the past, the lack of female chief executives has been attributed to poor childcare provision, the difficulty of returning to work after maternity leave, a lack of confidence and the fact that women network less than men.

Joyce O’Connor, the president of the NCI, says that previous studies have given conflicting explanations.

“People have been looking at this for 20 years,” she said. “What we’re trying to do now is to see what the reality is.

“The fact remains that the number of women in senior positions hasn’t increased as people expected. The glass ceiling has been around for a while and the cliff is a new thing, just shown in that one study.”

Paula King, a director at Executive Coaching, said women should learn from each other. She is launching a series of networking sessions this month. “Men play golf and carry out business informally over pints after work, but women do not,” she says.

Danuta Gray, the CEO of mobile phone company O2, welcomed the study. “You don’t come across a lot of women in senior positions in Ireland,” she said.

“It’s worse than the US and UK. If there’s a cohort of women who are frustrated, we should try to find them and address what they feel is getting in their way.

“There are challenges in terms of encouraging women to have more confidence.”

The managing director of Image publications, Jane McDonnell, who has interviewed most of Ireland’s senior businesswomen for a magazine to be launched next month, said interviewees had identified the glass ceiling, or “sticky floor”.

She said that new technology could help women in management. “Remote working is something that’s come up a huge amount and we’re beginning to see more and more ‘flexecutives’ — women who bend the rules about being in the office.”

Another female executive of a multi-million-euro company who didn’t want to be named said big business in Ireland was still very much a boys’ club.

“In big companies they just don’t want women. It’s like the Freemasons. You’ll find women do really well in their own businesses where they don’t have to ask anyone to get on.

“Companies really work people in their twenties to the bone, and the choice of kids can force women out. There are not a lot of people at the top of the pyramid and everyone’s climbing,” she said.

Niall Crowley, the chief executive of the Equality Authority, said sex was the second highest ground for complaint the authority receives after race.

“There’s a very significant barrier still there,” he said, “a major gender inequality which has resisted change. It’s definitely cultural but it’s systemic as well.

“I think that it has been really persistent discrimination, and the indicators are that in Ireland it is widespread.”

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