Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Mr. O'Rourke on his appointment. It is interesting to see that the leadership is moving from a Kerry-Louth combination to a Westmeath-Leitrim one. I would like to pay tribute to the outgoing Kerry-Louth combination. I really believe Mr. Frank Ryan made an exceptional contribution and so did Mr. Martin Shanahan. The figures speak for themselves. The doubling of employment in the period of their involvement and huge success in regional spread, which was not a given at the time they started.

I want to ask the Mr. O'Rourke about what he sees as strategic threats and how he assesses threats and opportunities. In particular, there is a sort of reshoring protectionism occurring and I wonder whether that will impact some of the bigger players that IDA Ireland has. There is a need to seriously regulate artificial intelligence in the interests of protecting human endeavour. We will become a centre of the oversight of any new rules and I wonder how that will impact on our approach.

The chairperson designate mentioned sustainability. I do not know. I certainly know, if one looks at indigenous companies, we have not moved to build the capacity to meet that challenge in Ireland. Whether we have done it in overseas companies is a question.

In terms of threats, we have the continuing BEPS process and the whole tax issue. I saw a former competitor of yours with an article in the newspaper saying that Ireland needed to sharpen up its tax offering in areas and so on. I would like to hear his views on some of those strategic threats.

Next, I want to hear Mr. O'Rourke's views on the cap on data centre capacity and whether that impinges on the IDA's approach. It is a short-term difficulty in terms of power but a huge long-term opportunity to have data centres in Ireland using the huge renewable capacity that we hope to build. The management of that pathway seems to me to be a strategic issue.

It is worth asking, and I do not want to put Mr. O'Rourke in an embarrassing position but he has come from a company that had massive professional and commercial dealings with FDI. Does he envisage having to create some sort of separation between his new and old roles? I know that he has retired but I ask in terms of protecting himself and everyone else in order that there can be no suggestion that anyone is being favoured. I would like to hear him address the issue rather than leave it unsaid and have people wonder about it.

Last, it seems to me that strategic leadership within companies is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of us winning new business or adapting to these new challenges. How far down the road is the IDA now in investing in capacity? I mean much like Enterprise Ireland has done very successfully with some of its now global companies but once small operations. Do we need to have the same approach to building strategic leadership in overseas companies?