I also join in congratulating the Minister of State, Deputy Ardagh, on her appointment and wish her the very best as she takes on this important and challenging role. First of all, I commend Deputy Byrne and thank him for continuing with this legislation. Deputy Byrne had this on First Stage in April 2025. If we think of how far AI has developed in that time, this legislation is needed now more than ever before. Let us think back to 2025. Deputy Byrne introduced this Bill on First Stage and the entire Grok controversy arose at the end of 2025 leading into this year. Had his Bill been enacted, a lot of the concerns that we have seen might not have arisen, particularly around Grok and different nudification apps. It shows the importance of this legislation. Obviously, it needs to be discussed on Committee Stage. We will discuss it then, ideally at the artificial intelligence committee as well as the justice committee. Progressing this legislation is critical in terms of getting to grips with the misuse of artificial intelligence, not only in Irish society, but globally. If it were to be progressed in the Houses, this could be an example of best practice to other countries, showing them how to do it. Deputy Byrne has covered most of the issues, as has Deputy Ó Snodaigh. I do not want to go over them too much. If we think of an older or elderly parent getting a call on a Saturday night that a son or daughter is in trouble, needs help, needs money or whatever it may be, and that call has been made through nefarious means, it is something that everybody fears, particularly if you look at the exploitation of older people when it comes to financial issues. Those are critical, as are people's music, art and entire identities. As the world is becoming more international, our individual identity is far more important to us than ever before. That includes our likenesses, namely, how we look and sound. Our likenesses being advantage of is something that we need to tackle head on. While the Minister of State outlined that the EU AI Act covered a lot of ground in terms of various issues, such as how AI interacted with people and generated synthetic content and how it was used for emotional recognition and biometric categorisation, it does not cover the issue of the misuse of people's images, voices and likenesses. The Bill is crucial and key to getting to grips with and coming to terms with that. We all will be aware of the transformative impact that AI is having but there need to be guardrails. We have seen a lot of misuse of AI and we have to do as much as possible in terms of the regulation of artificial intelligence. While the EU AI Act has been passed, the general scheme of the AI regulation Bill here is progressing through the House. The national AI office will be established by August of this year. That does not mean that we stand still. AI is changing quickly, and sometimes it is quite frustrating how slow Parliament here and, indeed, parliaments around the world operate. If we were to get to grips with the fast-changing element of artificial intelligence, then it should not be that First Stage of Deputy Byrne's Bill was in January of last year and in June 2026, nearly a year and a half later, we are discussing it on Second Stage and then moving on to Committee Stage. This is the type of time-sensitive issue where we need to find a method within this House to move legislation more quickly. Deputy Ó Snodaigh spoke about the large tech and AI companies. There needs to be a lot more done in terms of how they are regulated and how they answer not only to this House, but to the Garda and international police forces around the world, because if a complaint goes in, it can take weeks for any type of response. Meanwhile, that content has in some instances gone viral or stayed up and traumatised people. There is a far bigger responsibility. We need to be doing more in this House to hold the large tech companies, and particularly the AI companies, to task for what they are and are not doing to protect people. That is a crucial element as well. In fairness, the Bill goes a long way to protecting the individual identity that I mentioned previously. I will work with Deputy Byrne in terms of progressing this legislation. I commend him on this and give him my full support.

Sentiment score: 0.09