Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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And to keep employment growing. When I was going to school, and that was a long time ago, I remember the science teachers and so on telling us that everything would be automated and we would be free every day.

It would basically be all sunshine and we need not work because machines would do everything. I do not know how many people would have been employed in the economy in the sixties. We thought things were going well but now we are in a much more automated world and AI and all the rest is coming but the amazing thing is that most of these things create more opportunities in terms of employment than they destroy. Now they definitely changed the employment pattern, because the things that were being done by people are now being done by machines, but what happens is a different type of job replaces them. There may be people writing the scripts because AI does not work on its own. It does not really think. It follows a very sophisticated programme that somebody has to input, devise and whatever. Therefore, I believe we can maintain employment.

The Minister also seems to be telling us something in the round, which is good news. The Estimate for the Department at the beginning of the year was bang on target, give or take that it is spending a very large sum of €13 billion and if it had not given the one-off payments it would have money to give back to the Exchequer and there would be no Supplementary Estimate. That is very good news. I think I am correct in that. That is a tribute to the forecasting of the Department. One thing I had to get my head around previously was that if a Department was spending €12,000 million, then €1 million out of that is 1 out of 12,000 which is equivalent to someone arguing that you had overspent or underspent €1 out of €12,000 if it was day-to-day expenditure in a household. You might say that is irrelevant but the accuracy of the forecasting is commendable and it is a great help.

I would like to raise one caveat, however. There is something I notice every year and have always thought it a bit strange. The Christmas bonus is not put in the Estimates. The chance of the Department not giving a Christmas bonus, particularly in an election year, and even with the chance of Sinn Féin in government. it would give a Christmas bonus-----