Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

I am happy to take that. Digitalisation is a huge part of what the Government is focused on at the moment. We have recently rolled out our new AI guidelines for all public and civil servants to show people that we are here to help them embrace new technologies and use them to ultimately make better decisions.

However, we are doing that in a way that always puts the human at the centre of all decision-making and that is vital.

On the accessibility measures spoken about by Deputy McGreehan that will come in on 28 June, officials from the Office of Government Procurement sit on the stakeholder group. That is very much being looked at from the perspective of the stakeholder group, which meets regularly. A number of Government websites are also managed from the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, for example, the Citizens Information website and a number of other ones on which we work with that office. We are working closely with the Department of children to make sure we are able to transpose those measures into law when they come into effect.

A lot of work is also going on behind the scenes on our national digital strategy and AI strategy. In the next week or so, we will be in a position to give a more public update on that. The pen in that regard is with the Taoiseach and he is leading on that. The reason is that we want to show that this is of such importance that it is something the Department of the Taoiseach is invested in and is leading on. Officials from the Department of public expenditure, particularly in the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer and in the transformation team, are very much feeding into that. We will have workshops, ongoing engagement and consultation on that in the next couple of weeks, which will be announced next week.