Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I have a question on that. The risk-based assessment model is essentially an iterative one with a to-and-fro. Eventually standards, codes and approaches will evolve but given the speed at which the technology is evolving, does the model have much chance of keeping pace? I worry about what might be called the democratic deliberative process. The horse has largely already bolted in terms of the undermining of the political process and indeed journalism by some elements of social media, driven by AI. These things are moving so fast that I worry, certainly regarding one field I know a little about. Politics has changed so rapidly in a very short time, having become much more feral, much less interested in evidence about anything, much more box-ticking and more inclined to move to the most outrageous statement, and I suspect that, from the point of view of those running the platforms, AI is supporting this for good commercial reasons.

I worry about how this sort of responsibility test can really get down into the system. I just do not see it happening in my own arena. I do not know about others.

Moving to my second question, it was said that there can be no AI without the cloud. I am also on the climate committee and I see a real political tension in Ireland. There are those who say we need net-zero data centres today because 18% of Ireland's power is already being used by data centres compared with an average of 2% across Europe, that we are exposed and that the system is in difficulty. On the other hand, we have the moonshot of offshore renewable energy. I would have thought the witnesses' sector, the ICT sector, would be the great productive user of such power, should we get it. How are we going to get through these short-term pressures? The issue has become quite politicised. Many people point the finger. If they are not pointing to farmers, they are pointing to the witnesses' sector as the villains of the piece in our efforts to meet our climate targets.

I will ask my last question. Europe has no platform that is on the scale of the three companies represented here. The worry is that we will see innovation concentrated in the companies that can afford high computing speeds, cloud infrastructure and so on. Even the innovative spheres the companies are trying to create are obviously going to be branded spheres of innovation. They will be the Amazon, Google or Microsoft clubs of innovation. I get the impression that Europe is quite worried about that. We have to work with enterprise wherever it comes from but I would be interested in the witnesses' comments on that issue because it is a genuine issue that will influence thinking across the European Union in the coming years as regards regulation and how public policy should be balanced. There are countries that very much believe in the need to develop national champions and that it is the route to go. We are now in a geopolitical race and 70% of the world is controlled by autocrats and some countries believe that Europe needs to travel in the direction of strategic autonomy. I would like to hear the witnesses' views on that.