Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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I thank all the guests for coming in this morning. It is great to be having these conversations. I say a special thanks to the lads from Amazon who brought some committee members out to see a factory. That was a real eye opener. Maybe committee members could get an invitation from Google and Microsoft to go out and meet those guys as well.

As speakers already highlighted, there is so much to this and so many different areas to talk about. It is the next industrial revolution and it is already under way. The Dublin Tech Summit is happening in the RDS today and tomorrow. I certainly hope to get there. People will be blown away when they go there. I have already seen some of the stuff that is going on.

I will make just a couple of points to the general group first. The discussion has highlighted the political alignment for the SMEs in capacity building for skills promotion and all of that. I have a question on the State's ability to hang onto this tiger by the tail. We may have it by the tail at this moment in time but can we hold onto it? The challenges are immense. The witnesses have highlighted the issues around the adoption of the technology at the moment and that the multinationals are fluid to move and the return is investment based. They are adopting the technology and allowing people to train up. They are looking at this as opposed to the indigenous business sector. I would also put the State in that space as well. We have people in the State still using eight-year old laptops running old Microsoft systems, as well we know. How is the State going to manage this process of change given that business is moving at light-speed and the State is coming behind on a donkey and cart? Will the witnesses please address that?