I thank the Minister for giving us the opportunity to talk about such an important area of our society and economy. The area I am particularly focused on as Leas-Chathaoirleach of the AI Oireachtas committee is the impact of AI, the disruption and making sure that Ireland is ready and prepared. We need to make sure that the students of the future are adapting and developing the necessary skills they will need for the jobs of the future. An IMF report released on Monday or yesterday indicated that up to 40% of current jobs in Ireland would be impacted by AI in one way or another. That potentially underestimates the impact of AI in Ireland but what is really being highlighted there is the strong services element of our economy and the impact that AI can have on that. For a lot of young people out there, one of their biggest fears is that their jobs will effectively be taken away and they will not have jobs. These are graduates who have done all of the right things, worked hard and their parents have saved to support them through college. They want to see them getting good jobs and staying and working here. They are really fearful that the introduction and pace of AI will not be good for them. The only way to respond is to ensure that we have the right skill set and that our third level institutions, our further and higher education institutions and the State are walking, as much as they can, in lockstep with the changes that are taking place in the private sector and the changes that are being adapted in the public sector when it comes to AI. The Minister will be familiar with the interim report the AI committee published in December. One of the key recommendations was the establishment of a critical skills observatory. I was delighted to see that recommendation form part of the national AI strategy published by the Taoiseach. I am aware that the Minister is working on this observatory and that it is soon to be completed, based on replies to parliamentary questions I saw. We need to set up the critical skills observatory as soon as possible. It is important – maybe this is already happening – to have a good degree of collaboration between the Minister’s Department and the Department of education, given that the Minister for education, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, has established an AI task force. This is really responding to the needs of the moment. I am sure I am no different from any other TD in this room in the sense that when I talk to teachers and students, I note they are saying the same thing. Teachers just want some level of direction in terms of how the children use AI. The children want direction on how they can use AI in a way that effectively does not stupefy them and does not reduce their capacity and learning skills in education. Many countries are already moving at pace in this area. One of the countries I visited with the Chair of the AI committee, Deputy Malcolm Byrne, was Estonia, a country well known for its digitalised society. At secondary level, it is already sandboxing education to some extent. It is introducing AI into the classroom but monitoring and assessing it at a very high level. Academic institutions are supporting its introduction into the classroom. They are appraising it as it is introduced. Having retrained many of the teachers who have voluntarily signed up for some of the pilot projects, they are assessing the learning in the classroom. Ireland has, perhaps, the opportunity to learn from the mistakes being made in some countries when they introduce AI into education. I urgently ask that the critical skills observatory be established and that we ensure we have the jobs for the future.

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