I welcome the chance to speak on this Bill because I can see the logic in the State being prepared for the way industry, technology, national security and environmental concerns are changing. I take on board what the Government said about this Bill giving our enterprise agencies the flexibility to operate in a globalised system that is more competitive, more AI enhanced and more security sensitive than ever before. The Industrial Development Acts of the 1980s and 1990s - when I grew up - were not designed for an era of AI quantum computing, cyber resilience, cyberattacks or climate-driven industrial focus. Just like Ireland evolved, as was referenced by a previous speaker, from the 1950s policies of Lemass - and many tributes should go to T.K. Whitaker for those - the situation has again taken a massive leap forward. The pace is increasing all the time. However, when we modernise the machinery of the State, which is laudable, we have to make sure that checks and balances remain. We have to have that ambitious side, similar to the 1950s pioneering spirit, but we also have to make sure that we spend wisely in terms of how we invest. I broadly support the direction in which the Bill will take us, but I wish to raise a number of concerns, in a constructive way, which I hope will be reflected in the strengthening of the Bill as it goes through the different Stages. The first has been referred to by a number of Deputies already, including Deputies Gibney and Boyd Barrett. It is the most headline-grabbing one from a lot of perspectives. I refer to the removal of the requirement for the Government to give approval before agencies engage in activities of primarily military relevance. The Government argued that the provisions in place up to now are outdated, that dual use technologies blur the line between civil and military and that Ireland needs to be able to participate in emerging European frameworks and so on. This is all true. Across the EU, dual use research and development spending increased by 40% between 2018 and 2023, according to the European Commission's 2023 defence industrial strategy report. The European Defence Fund has been allocated €7.95 billion for the 2021 to 2027 period under the European Defence Fund Regulation (EU) 2021/697. That is a massive amount of money. It reflects a continent that, for its own reasons - we can see why the Poles and Germans would like this - is rearming technologically and militarily. Even if we are constrained in certain aspects due to our military neutrality, our membership of the EU is being pushed in that direction. We cannot pretend we exist in a bubble. We are neutral, however, and as long as the population wishes it to be so, we cannot remove what is, in effect, a safeguard without replacing it with something, perhaps more modern, but at least of equal standing or better. This is where I have the concerns. Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to it quite eloquently a few minutes ago. Section 8 of the Bill being added at a later stage is worrying because, once the requirement for explicit approval is removed, the moment is also moved forward when someone in a position of power can ask what exactly we are supporting and whether it fits in with our military neutrality. Are we not, lads and lassies, actually supporting genocide? Where does the buck stop? It may not stop at the Minister any more. Who is accountable? Cynics might say that is the reason, to get rid of that accountability, to give us - to borrow an American term, a weasel word - strategic flexibility. Basically, if it is a deliberate attempt to do something like that, it is an abomination. If it is an oversight, it needs to be fixed through the parliamentary process. If we are stepping into the defence security and resilience space - whether we say it explicitly or not - we have to have structures that reflect our neutrality. That means we still need a statutory reporting requirement to the Oireachtas, whether it is to the Committee on Defence and National Security, with regular updates by the Minister in the Dáil or Seanad, or something similar with the same level of agreed scrutiny that Opposition parties and Independents would be happy with. It means having a clear definition of what the phrase "primarily military relevance" means in the current age. The meaning might change in five years' time, so we have to have good definitions. We do not know whether this refers to funding that would create jobs while also facilitating the guarding of undersea cables. Does it have anything to do with Russian submarines or security equipment for EU Presidency events? Does it mean giving the Israeli armed forces a leg up, even if only to help them with their HR systems? We need an independent oversight mechanism. I listened to the discussion on the radio this morning between Deputies Richard Boyd Barrett and Barry Ward. It was quite interesting. I want to put this on the record because I will not be here this evening for the debate on Deputy Boyd Barrett's Private Members' Bill. I acknowledge that the Government has valid points to raise on what the proposed legislation can do unilaterally in terms of whether or not we can override the European Union element. If, however, we are serious about being signatories in the context of calling out Israel for genocide, then we should bring this type of legislation as far as possible in order that the EU will be obliged to say, "Well, actually, you can't do this. It is illegal." At least symbolically, we will have shown we are serious about what we purport to care about as a country. We need transparency at all stages. Another aspect of this legislation involves environmental protection and carbon abatement. The Bill allows projects to be assessed solely on environmental criteria; given my Green background, I fully support that. We have to accelerate the decarbonisation process. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has made it clear that Ireland must reduce emissions by 51% by 2030 in the context of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021. Unfortunately, we are projected to fall short by a wide margin in that regard. That is on the basis of an EPA report from 2024. I have consistently called in the Dáil for these targets not just to be met but also to be exceeded, especially in terms of energy security, self-sufficiency and the related urgent requirements to upgrade our electricity grid. Again, we need financial transparency. Even if the goal is a good one and we are trying to do the decent thing in a world with lunatics like Trump and others denying that climate change is an increasingly dangerous reality, we need clear reporting on the types, number and scale of grants and on the expected outcomes and measured outcomes. We need to know that the money being spent is changing behaviour, whether individual consumer behaviour, industrial behaviour or through Government agencies, so that we are achieving our objectives, rather than just rewarding stuff we were going to have to do anyway, and that we are going back to the visionary idea of T.K. Whitaker in the 1950s. If this Bill is being brought in to create something more modern and to help us better achieve our aims, that is very welcome, but it should go above and beyond our existing targets. Another angle I want to look at is the expansion of IDA Ireland's co-investment powers. I am not concerned about some of those relating to the more pro-business side of things. I am definitely pro business but I am not pro giving business a licence to print money at the expense of the consumer. Co-investment is a good idea, even if it crowds out some private developers. If a strategically important project requires to be pushed forward and if it strengthens things from a regional or decarbonisation perspective or provides more jobs, then the State should not be afraid to take the lead. We have seen too many cases where we have waited for the so-called market to solve a problem and let the companies come in and do it. That sometimes means the problem either never gets solved or is not solved fast enough, or else it generates massive profits for private companies and little community dividend. Many onshore wind farms, for example, go into communities but very few in the communities would say they got a good share of the profits or the projects have enhanced their quality of life in return for the inconvenience. I am a huge supporter of wind energy, but we have to ensure that there is a community dividend. This would also apply from a national perspective to offshore wind and stuff we have not pushed because we are depending on private companies, like wave, tidal, solar, to some extent hydrogen, battery storage investment and deep sea harbour development. All are areas where the State could lead the way off its own bat, or at least through co-investment, with the caveat that the State be the lead investor. Any State investment, including co-investment, carries a financial risk. Commercial property values and land values have experienced big swings over the years - 10% to 15% in recent years in the office and industrial segments according to the CBRE Ireland market outlook 2024. Construction cost inflation has averaged 7% to 9% annually since 2021, as we know from a number of reports like the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland tender price index for the period 2021 to 2024. That has only got worse since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the more recent war in the Strait of Hormuz and related fuel price hikes, which also push up the price of doing business. We would want to be careful, especially in the scenario of these conflicts and the risk of a related global recession. We do not want to be holding property purchased at a peak price or paying over the odds in a bidding war unless we can guarantee we will get a return. I am digressing slightly because I have a little bit of time available. The whole process of NAMA was a good idea, particularly in the context of buying all the property, securing it and then trying to get a return on the investment. We got billions back. If you index day-to-day prices, however, you will see we undersold things from the point of view of what we got for the State. That was in the context of a global economic crisis with the troika putting pressure on us. If the likes of IDA Ireland will take on more risk by getting involved, hopefully as the lead, in these co-investment projects, the Oireachtas has to have scrutiny, not to the level of micromanagement that will actually stop stuff happening, but definitely pre-notification of major co-investments above a reasonable defined threshold. It means annual reporting on the performance of assets and published risk management frameworks so we know the basis on which decisions are made in advance. We have had too many overspends and too few returns in the past. I wholeheartedly agree with empowering the agencies, but we need to ensure oversight. That brings me to a broader point in the context of the Bill and possibly beyond it. The governance structures overseeing our enterprise agencies have not necessarily kept pace with the expansion of their mandates over the years. They are asked to do more than in T.K. Whitaker and Lemass's time, or the seventies, eighties or nineties. We now have the green transition, the digital transition, the so-called defence, security and resilience technology, growth and infrastructure. While co-investment is not new, it is new in this context, especially with the lead agency model I have been suggesting. In 2020, the OECD published the principles of good governance for independent public bodies and set out international best practice standards for how semi-automonous agencies like IDA Ireland, the HSE, ComReg, the EPA and Enterprise Ireland should be structured and held accountable. This model is widely used by governments to benchmark whether agencies with significant operational independence can still operate in a transparent, accountable and democratic framework. Looking at this from the OECD's perspective, when agencies expand their mandates, as this Bill, to a degree, proposes, without parallel reform of how they are governed, there is a risk the accountability gap increases and the scrutiny decreases. We need, in every case above a certain amount, risk-weighted assessment aligned with best practice internationally, particularly at EU level and maybe looking at the UK specifically. It means a stronger as opposed to a weaker role for the public accounts committee in reviewing the activities of agencies and for the enterprise committee of which I am a member. On the flammable liquid provisions, updating safety standards is necessary, but we also have to be mindful of the compliance burden on small operators, particularly those in rural areas. Industry estimates suggest it could cost up to €15,000 per site for upgrades and inspections, depending on the scale of the equipment involved. Those who came up with those estimates would say that because the information comes from an Irish petroleum industry association compliance costs survey from 2023. However, they do have a fair point to make to the effect that if you want to manage safety, you should try to do it in a way that does not potentially put companies out of business. I hope that clarification can be given as this Bill progresses as to how standards will be phased in, what sort of supports will be available and how we can ensure they do not undermine local businesses. They are not related to the Bill specifically, but there are a couple of other matters I would like to talk about briefly, purely because they are relevant to where industrial policy goes. I have mentioned these matters previously, both at the committee of which I am a member and in other debates in the House. I am of the view that we should create something similar to Silicon Valley in the midlands, in the triangle comprising the lands between Tullamore, Athlone and Mullingar. My constituency has a high concentration of pharma and software industries. Some 20% of those who work in these industries come from overseas. They are all living in my area, which they are entitled to do, but they have very high-income jobs, which means that houses prices locally are being pushed up. Equally, because all of the companies they work for want to locate in the Dublin area, the increase in traffic does tend to add to the gridlock. It would make a lot of sense from an industrial perspective that an area the size of Silicon Valley would be covered by that triangle, a 20 km space in the middle of the country, where future policy would encourage or even specify that the companies have to go to those type of hubs. That is where they would be located. We would possibly need to build a new city to accommodate them and plan it properly in order that it would be a 15-minute city where all of the facilities and amenities would be within walking distance and where people could work in a much more modern way. That would also mean that if people living in places like Dublin Mid-West are going to be commuting for 50 minutes in order to get to work, it would make much more sense for them to westwards rather than adding to the gridlock eastwards and along the M50. The other matter I want to reference is that of our ports, particularly in the context of co-investment funding. We need deep-sea ports on the west coast. We need battery storage and maybe hydroelectric, a Turlough Hill-type project, that would be capable of holding onto the energy generated by using offshore wind, the waves on the west coast and the tides in the Shannon Estuary and off the coast of Dublin. We have wave energy potential in the context of which we are way behind both Scotland and Denmark. All of this could contribute to massive export potential in terms of electricity. I listened to a debate earlier today about the potential for bringing nuclear power to Ireland. I am not opposed this ideologically, but there would be a need to ramp things up and spend money on imported uranium or thorium, cheap as they might be in the current context. We could do that, but we have the potential, using battery and hydro storage, to be self-sufficient in electricity terms , to provide the energy for data centres and get an income from them and to export energy to the UK and France. If we do need a nuclear element, we could take some nuclear energy from France, if we ever the need to do so, during an off-peak period. With wave, wind, solar and tidal power, and also if we ramp up the grid and the private wires element, I cannot see why we would ever be short of energy at any time of the year, particularly as we have enough capacity to cater for our own needs, although our export capacity might slow down at different times. We need to look at strategic investment and partnership with companies in the context of that element of industrial policy, because it would be a win-win situation for everyone.

Sentiment score: 0.21