I commend the Minister of State on bringing this Bill to these Houses. I want to make one point about the Oireachtas AI committee. Unfortunately, as the Minister of State knows, this was a Bill that did not go to the Oireachtas AI committee; it went to the Department of enterprise committee. This is not within the Minister of State's gift but I do not believe this is the last time in these Houses that we will be regulating or legislating in the area of artificial intelligence. I think the work we have done on the AI committee demonstrates a level of knowledge and understanding in relation to these issues. In the future, we should look at making it a permanent committee that would have the role and function of scrutinising legislation like this. Unlike some other speakers, I like the aspect of the Bill whereby the Minister can direct certain aspects of how the AI office would operate outside of the regulatory and enforcement level. I think we should be more specific as to what kinds of directions we are going to give the AI office. Right now, we know what the AI office is going to do. It is going to enforce the EU AI regulation and make sure that enterprises are compliant in relation to it. What we do not know is the role it will have in regard to advocacy. I would like to see the Bill reflecting an AI office that would work on AI literacy, for example, and would have a clear, stated function in the whole area of AI literacy for both enterprises and consumers. Ultimately, the fears and apprehensions people have about AI are similar in industry and to people just living their daily lives. There is a great fear about what AI is going to bring and yet people, particularly in Ireland, have taken up its usage quite rapidly. In the OECD, we are even making improvements in respect of our small business adaptation, yet that fear remains and prevails. Quite clearly, this new AI office, perhaps working with Enterprise Ireland, could have a very strong role in delivering a wide literacy programme. However, AI literacy is more than just enterprise. It is in our primary and secondary schools. What role will the AI office have in respect of AI literacy everywhere? What we are doing at a regulatory level with the AI office makes sense. We are going to have a number of competent authorities that are going to have a regulatory function as it relates to AI within their own specialist domain and yet we are still going to have this single, overarching AI office when it comes to regulation. Surely we should have the exact same thing when it comes to advocacy, understanding and AI literacy that while it might not be the AI office delivering AI literacy schemes in schools, it could be the AI office that advises and directs the Department of education. It could be the AI office - if perhaps not meeting with small business to foster greater understanding of their adaptation of AI - playing a role in working with Enterprise Ireland to ensure that Enterprise Ireland is sufficiently tooled up to provide those necessary levels of adaptation if we are going to remain competitive. I might conclude with the wider context. It is a good thing that we are introducing laws in the area of AI. It should help grow and foster trust among the public as regards what we are doing but let us be real here. There are massive fears about the impact of AI in regard to unemployment. I know SOLAS is establishing a national skills observatory under the Department of further and higher education but there are even greater global fears. They talk about superintelligent AI being a global systemic risk. Even industry is now kind of saying the same things as people were perhaps previously in industry and are critical at the pace of growth among these frontier AI companies. They are talking about a moment similar to the nuclear arms race, where the world needs to come together and agree certain levels of norms. Right now, the European Union, with 700 million people, has agreed certain levels of norms but if the United States, China, India and other major global powers are not all in agreement as to how we are going to regulate AI moving forward, if we are at a certain level of superintelligent AI, God knows where we will be in 20 years. If we do not deal with that challenge, everyone will suffer. I hope that in our hosting of the EU Presidency, the AI summit, our enactment of the laws today and the establishment of the AI office, that we can play some role in that major global decision and that we can use the Presidency to do that.

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