Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Byron for her evidence and for being here this morning. I am conscious she is not long in the role so I do not want to pepper her with questions but I have a particular interest in the work of the HSA and wanted to explore some of that with her. I fully appreciate there may be answers she has to follow up on in writing. That is grand but I do not think any of my questions are massively technical so hopefully she will not have to.

I want to talk about the expansion of the remit to address work-related psychological risks such as bullying, stress, violence and aggression. I am a former trade union official and have some knowledge of the work of the HSA and of the impact of these in the workplace. It can be hard to define some of the issues the HSA is taking under its remit. It is particularly difficult to investigate and come to conclusions in the gig economy and regarding digital labour platforms, as they are called. Will Ms Byron expand on the intention and how the authority plans to do its work in the area? It is very fast-moving. We had a session a couple of weeks ago on artificial intelligence, AI, and I do not think I was the only one whose jaw dropped to the floor on realising how much faster AI is moving than the labour market is moving and than we are moving. Does Ms Byron see a role for the HSA? What is that role? Will it have to upskill existing staff or bring in additional skilled staff to do it? It is a very new area. Will it come under the occupational health division? How will that work? Are there plans to expand it?