Mr. Barry Lowry:

It is important when making assessments about algorithms to row back and look at the data. I have worked for several Ministers and have not met one who does not take extremely seriously the privilege of holding public data and the importance of looking after it well. In the Department of public expenditure, one of the reasons we created the Data Sharing and Governance Act was an instruction from my then Minister that not only should Ireland be seen as one of the best Governments in Europe for digital governance, but it should also be an exemplar across Europe in data governance itself. That Act was created to bring in independent oversight advising the Minister on use of data by Departments.

I mentioned the data governance board, which is representative of society, industry and so on. Every data sharing agreement it sees is agreed by the two data protection officers. It then goes out to public consultation and they have to tell representative groups. If it is an agriculture one, they tell the farmers unions it is going out and they get feedback from them. They have to show they have addressed the results of the public consultation. It then goes through an advisory committee and then the data governance board itself, which makes a recommendation to the Minister. Then it is published in full. Every data sharing agreement is available for perusal.

The objective was to make Ireland one of the best at data governance across Europe. We are the most trusted country in the OECD with the use of people's data. That is because of the transparency of the process. As AI moves along, I have no doubt algorithms and so on will be managed with exactly the same degree of prudence because of the importance of that reputation.

As they say, trust is hard earned and easily lost. It is so important that we get that.