Dr. Sasha Rubel:

On the Deputy's question on national champions, at AWS we are convinced that there will not be one foundation model to rule them all. One of the main areas in which we co-operate with public sector counterparts is on the development of large language models in local languages. We hope to develop a model in Gaelic as well. These make public services available to citizens in the language most adapted to the needs on the ground. At an infrastructure level, we also recently launched our European sovereign cloud. This allows for counterparts to decide where their data is stored and how and by whom it may be accessed with respect to encryption.

On the question of data centres and sustainability, I will flag that, for AWS, transitioning to carbon-free energy sources is one of the most impactful ways to lower carbon emissions. Migrating to the cloud actually reduces the carbon footprint of innovation. We are also working on sustainability even at the level of our chips. We are developing AI and machine learning, AIML, chips, for example, AWS Trainium, that are much more energy efficient in running training and inference for large language models. I am conscious that there have been debates in the public sphere on this specific question so I would just like to say that, for us, it is not a question of the environment or the economy. We see this as the environment and the economy. To give a very quick example, we have the Tallaght district heating scheme, which is the first initiative in the nation to use excess heat from an AWS data centre in Tallaght to heat nearby public sector, residential, academic and commercial premises. We also recently announced a strategic collaboration with Bord na Móna that will see us become the anchor tenant of a new eco-energy park in the midlands. We see the possibility of economy and environment going hand in hand.