A pen and paper.

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Deputy O'Donoghue just spoke, and I have a west Limerick background. When I heard about AI when I younger, it was on the farm, and it was not artificial intelligence. It was artificial insemination, but things have changed over many years. That joke has been made many times but it always speaks to me about how we have to keep in touch. Deputy O'Flynn spoke earlier, and I have a lot of the same concerns he has. He spoke clearly about them, and many people have the same concerns. We need regulation but we have to be careful. We do not want to over-regulate or over-instruct, but AI is an evolutionary change. We cannot have it becoming like the Wild West, so we need strong rules and regulations in place, and we need to harmonise them and make sure they are there because they have to be. That is why this is such a balancing act and why it is something that is brand new. We all know that artificial intelligence is having an effect on all our daily lives in many different ways. Some people use it all the time. Some people use it for work. It is changing small companies, and it is really having an impact on large companies. Employee numbers are probably smaller. I started in PriceWaterhouseCoopers as a young auditor. I am sure that within the next couple of years, those numbers will be reduced over time, especially in the US. It will be first to embrace this and after that Ireland will, no doubt, follow the same path. Companies will no longer need people to go in and assess the basics. They will go in at a higher level. Regarding the impact that AI will have, we do not know where it is going to end up. Those large companies that are in charge of it are working with other companies and getting in deeper. Ultimately, the risk is that people will be excluded and that is the larger existential AI risk in the workplace. Previous speakers mentioned about a potential AI tax, a term I hate, on users and corporates, which is something I referenced before, because no one knows where it will end up. If workers, companies and smaller SMEs are going to be displaced then we have to have some way to monitor this. That is further down the field, but these conversations need to be had at the outset because we do not know the impact that AI will have. That is why I welcome the Bill in place and the office being established. We need someone to spot the gaps, differences and potential impacts because this needs to be monitored. As was referenced earlier, Ireland is currently benefiting from AI through corporation taxes and even business. I was in with the Central Bank yesterday. Its officials spoke about how a vast element of the growth in the economy is related to AI and data centres. That is where we are seeing the benefits in many ways that other countries are not. I am not going to speak out of two sides of my mouth and complain and worry because we are seeing a real benefit from it. At the same time, it does not mean that we cannot look towards the future. I welcome the Bill, and it is really important that we do this. We also need to ensure that we do not over-regulate and go too far. At the same time, we have to monitor it and that is the balance that we will have to get right out of this.

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