Mr. Donal Travers:

On diversity in the sector, to go back a level, the growth of the technology sector over the past ten years, particularly over the last four years, has been driven by wider trends and digitalisation across the broad economy. As both Ms Buckley and Ms Fitzpatrick mentioned, every company is now digital or relies on digital technologies for its business. That is the underlying trend in the tech sector. There is growth on the back of the digital trend across all sectors of the economy.

Where Ireland has been successful over the last several years has been in the areas of cloud, cloud infrastructure, the applications that sit in the cloud and their software applications. Twenty years ago, when Ireland was considered to be one of the largest exporters of software in the world, that software was distributed via printed discs that were packaged, shrink-wrapped and sent around the world. That work is now being done from a data centre. Ireland is a leading location both for the infrastructure and the software applications that are delivered from here. The number of companies in the software sector has grown in recent years.

Other areas in which Ireland is strong, to respond to the Deputy, are semi-conductors and related chip design or micro-electronics. There is also cybersecurity which, again, pervades every business sector. We are diversified across all of those key areas of the sector right now. Some are more cyclical than others and some will be more impacted in the short term than others. The one thing I can say is that it is a long-term growth trajectory for the sector based on long-term needs for new digital technologies, and we are diversified across that.

We are looking at new technology areas like quantum, augmented reality, AR, and virtual reality, VR, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies that, again, impact on all sectors of the economy not just the tech sector. The growth in digitalisation across the broad economy is what is driving investment in the tech sector and the investment by tech companies in Ireland.