James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I thank both witnesses for their presentations. The ICCL said in its submission there is a false dichotomy between regulation and innovation, but is that really true? Ultimately, regulation imposes a burden and impacts on competitiveness. The witnesses are probably familiar with the Draghi report that clearly set out the regulatory burden in Europe negatively impacts research and development and the technology sector vis-à-vis China and the United States. Is there not a bit more nuance to this debate than saying that the regulatory dichotomy is untrue?

I also take issue with the billionaire narrative.

I am certainly not here to defend billionaires but Dr. Shrishak is here from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. That kind of language is popularising a very serious discussion. He is trying to say the guys building these things are all just billionaires and they do not care about the citizen, they are just trying to make money and over here we are focused on your rights and citizens' rights. Is there not a lot more nuance to this debate? Dr. Shrishak rightly highlighted one organisation which does not have a great reputation, let us be frank, in this area and in terms of its contribution to the debate but there is a spectrum of industry. Some LLM creators are not as hostile, put it that way, to a regulatory environment as others. Perhaps we should call that out. It is no great surprise and probably as predictable as the tide that industry wants less regulation and does not want regulation. We have to find nuance. We want to Europe to be competitive. As I said, Europe can have a leading role in regulation. If you look at how successful Ireland in particular has been at implementing the data protection regime without diminishing investment from technology companies, as frustrated as a lot of the entities that received fines from the Data Protection Commission might be, we have balanced it reasonably well. Europe has a good opportunity when it comes to the whole AI regulatory environment - not no regulation and not pausing the AI Act but there is somewhere in between. Would Dr. Shrishak not agree? It is not a false dichotomy. It is about getting the sweet spot between innovation and regulation. One would probably view the federal government of the United States as very far away from that. China is very far away from that. Europe has made mistakes in the past. We have to get the sweet spot. Is that not an important factor, even from a citizens' rights perspective?