Mr. Ronan Lupton:

To start, I have to go back to the existing legal framework, which is the data protection situation. Picking up from Dr. Bambrick's input, there are issues but the existing frameworks should be maintained. We have the vast majority of tech companies in the world sitting in our back yard. The regulatory regime, while criticised, is quite good. Some of the investigations and findings take a long time to get results, in particular from the data protection side of the house, but when the decisions come out, they are fairly robust. We have the European central function of the data protection board and supervisor looking at them as well. That is the starting point for the vindication of rights.

Have we been good legislatively at putting in place protections for data sharing among Departments and semi-State bodies? I think the answer is "No". We have had to catch up with data-sharing agreements and so forth. The Deputy's observation is correct that aspects of AI are used to great benefit in the Passport Office, Revenue online and other services with back-end AI features and functionalities.

Taking the Deputy's question head on in relation to the board and functionality, there will always be stakeholders across the spectrum. If the observation is that the spectrum is not covered properly, then the answer to the question is that needs to be looked at by the Minister again. It might be a recommendation from this set of deliberations that that occur.

As to the forthcoming AI Act and what the State needs to do in relation to the strategy, it will have to change anyway based on what went on before the Parliament last week. The headline item was police body cameras. I use that as an example rather than getting into that debate, which may come later. That is coming. Is facial recognition technology coming? No. That is based on what went on last week, really. There are other issues too. The answer to the question is: it needs to be looked at.