United Rugby Championship bosses are exploring the possibility of establishing a Women's league in the near future.
URC chief executive Martin Anayi told reporters today that a Women's URC is a new project that he would like to see up and running "sooner rather than later".
Anayi admits that such a move will only be possible with the financial help of the Unions and the clubs.
Ireland internationals based domestically are still amateur, so that could be a problem in the short term in terms of the provinces participating in a new League, although Ireland head coach Greg McWilliams said after Sunday's heavy loss to England that professionalism was coming.
"I was speaking about that to stakeholders yesterday," said Anayi, when asked about the possibility of a Women's URC.
"Over half of our employees are women. We asked them what they wanted and a competition for women was in the top three answers from everyone.
"It’s not the market, it just feels like we should have a women’s competition.
"We’re only a competition organiser so we asked the Unions because they pay the players - and we have seen what they have done in England with Premier XVs.
"We’ve spoken to World Rugby because they have a competition coming on stream, and with Ben Morel in the Women’s Six Nations.
"We feel the URC can play a part in the Women’s 6N getting bigger and stronger. We just need to work out how we can bring that about.
"Does it need to be 16 teams? Probably not. Do we get it going sooner rather than later? Yes, we should, the women's game deserves that.
"We do have women's teams operating in Ireland, for example, it's a little bit hit and miss elsewhere.
"But we can pull together a real great competition that is in conjunction with what the Unions and clubs want to achieve because it is in conjunction with their funding.
"There is definitely a will, we'd love to see a Women's URC and we're exploring how we bring that about now."
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts
