Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for their work; their family, friends and teachers for their support; and BT for its continued support of this competition. I think any of us who go to BT Young Scientist are often blown away by the range. You think you have heard it all and then suddenly somebody comes up with a question that makes you go, “Oh, I never thought about that.”

I will follow on from what Deputy O’Callaghan was saying, and we were all talking about exams. When we think about exams, in many ways, the leaving certificate is trying to cram large amounts of data into all of our brains so that we all just spew it back out in a series of exams at the end of a five- or six-year period. Given where generative AI is going, do the witnesses think that we will need the leaving certificate in the future? If AI will be able to manage all of that data, how will we test human intelligence? Does anyone have any thoughts on that?