Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

If the Senator were to ask my officials, the first answer he would get is that we are not sufficiently resourced. We would always like to have more money, but the budget is coming and I will certainly be making the case for resourcing a new national AI office to the Minsters, Deputies Chambers and Donohoe, and that the Department should be ready for that.

Are we prepared at a granular level? Our local enterprise offices, LEOs, and enterprise boards are doing a huge amount of work on this. We have quite a few digital hubs around the country - I have the exact number for the Senator - and the digital hubs in our local authorities work with Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and Skillnet Ireland and are out doing the business of trying to promote digitisation in companies and small businesses. The biggest challenge for us will be to make sure the SME sector is not left behind when we are talking about enterprise because bigger companies will perhaps have entire units to adapt and bring their staff with them. We have a bigger body of work to do on bringing the smaller SME sector along with us.