Mr. Feargal O'Rourke:

We are literally in the middle of our strategy process for the next four or five years. Two of the big themes coming through on this, or probably three if I break them out a bit, are sustainability and decarbonisation, artificial intelligence and, as a kind of a subset of that, digitisation and associated issues.

If I take artificial intelligence first, I am old enough to remember when personal computers first came in. People said it was amazing, would lead to huge reductions in job numbers and everybody would be able to sit back and work a four-day week and so on. What happened? It freed people up to work in different areas. It created new jobs. It did eliminate other jobs. I remember in my old job starting off we had comptometers and people had the job of literally totting up numbers all day, every day. They were superseded by the advent of personal computers.

Artificial intelligence is going to have the same impact. There is an artificial intelligence industry, like OpenAI, but every single company in every single industry is looking to see how artificial intelligence can impact its business. What is likely to happen is that it will eliminate some jobs but will also create greater opportunities for people to move up the value chain. If we look forward a few years, artificial intelligence will impact some of the jobs that are currently in IDA Ireland supported companies. However, I like to believe that in the same way that a number of companies here have evolved over the years and increased their employment while doing things unrelated to what they were originally doing, we will combat that as well. Where the IDA is helping, whether it is in artificial intelligence or on sustainability, is that we are recognising that Irish operations of these multinationals are having to prove their relevance to headquarters - that they are ahead of the game and understand what the overall corporate mission is on sustainability and AI - and setting out what they are doing in Ireland. Therefore, what we are helping those companies to do is understand where they are on their roadmap within their organisations and offer assistance, whether it is grant assistance or training, to help them upskill within their organisation. Even at my first board meeting last week, when we were reviewing some project applications, it was incredible to see a number that were addressing this issue of artificial intelligence head on within their organisation and trying to get better than their counterparts in France, Spain and everywhere else.

Sustainability, which includes decarbonisation, renewable and artificial intelligence, which includes digitisation, will be core to the IDA strategy of helping our existing clients and also trying to attract higher value parts of those industries into Ireland. It is very much on the agenda. It is very much already being supported by the IDA and will be a central part of the strategy. The things we have done well over the past 75 years, and particularly over the last decade, are great but they will not get us to where we want to get over the next five years. We have to take those new areas on board.