Mr. Gerard Brady:

There will be interesting debates about things like artificial intelligence, AI, and robotics and whether these technologies are a threat or an opportunity. There may well be jobs, though, where organisations are finding it really hard to recruit people to work in them at those levels. From the employers' perspective, this is about the additional costs being put into place in the context of pension auto-enrolment, sick leave pay and everything else coming through. These are all noble in themselves but there may just be an opportunity for robotics and AI to play a very productive improved role, and, again, to improve the quality of jobs and the pay that people are getting for doing their work. We have a tremendously educated workforce now. It is staggering what we have done over the last 30 to 40 years in terms of the number of people educated. I am not quite talking off the top of my head. When I left school, I think about 27,000 people, or something like that figure, went to college that year. There are now approximately 600,000 people going to college annually. This is extraordinary. These people want quality jobs and quality work too. Again, in this context, research and development activity, for example, gives them an opportunity to work in small companies on something interesting.