John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. I am not a member of this committee. I thank the Chair for allowing me to come in. When I heard Mr. Fee was here, I decided I would have to come in and ask a few questions. Mr. Fee and I have chatted a lot about retail in Dundalk in recent years.

I had a conversation with another shopkeeper about some amazing technology that I did not know existed. It is the concept of smart video surveillance where AI technology is used in CCTV to try to identify suspicious hand movements and other suspicious activity. The Dundalk retailer who installed it said he was amazed at how many of his regular day-to-day customers, people whom he knows and whose families and kids he knows, were stealing from him. It all added up. In his usual diplomatic way, he was able to say to someone "Oh, you might have forgotten about that newspaper." It started out with a tin of dog food and a newspaper. Studies show that this type of surveillance can reduce shoplifting in a shop by over 40%. It was the first time I realised that this type of technology existed. I just thought CCTV was CCTV and required the retailer to go back and look at it. This is this is real-time detection on his mobile phone through AI where a human can then look at it and identify if somebody is robbing something or just moving their hand to get their wallet out. How widespread is that in retail stores? What is the cost for a business to install that level of AI-type CCTV?