Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday I spent the day in the University of Galway where we had a seminar on cyber security and the future. We are talking about cyber security in this country when artificial intelligence is coming down the road at a rate of knots. Really we need to up our game. On 15 June, Martin O'Brien, the chief executive officer of Louth & Meath Education and Training Board, launched a cyber training programme which has courses for everybody from chief executive officers to the person on the street. These programmes are funded by the State. I thank the Minister and Minister of State, Deputies Harris and Ossian Smyth, for their support of that project. I was there at the very beginning of it and brought people to Estonia.

There has been a lot of talk about NATO membership and all this nonsense in the State. What we need is relationships with like-minded countries across the world that have similar feelings to ourselves in the area of cyber security. One of the key countries we need to engage with is Taiwan and we do not even have an office there. Taiwan is one of the major chip manufacturers in the world. As we face the battle in cyber and artificial intelligence, a lot of it is going to take place at the chip level. We need our universities to have relationships with universities and manufacturers in Taiwan. In saying that, the relationship we have with China in our universities through the Confucius Institute needs to be scaled down. I am not so sure the Confucius Institute is solely interested in delivering Mandarin Chinese. I think it might also have an interest in delivering some sort of ethos that it is involved in. I ask that in the fall we have a debate with the Minister for Foreign Affairs about opening an office in Taipei. It does not have to be an embassy, just an office like most European countries have, where we can engage directly with people in Taipei on the ground. The geopolitical situation there is quite complex at the moment and I would not want to do anything to make it worse. However, we need the relationship with the Taiwanese for our education purposes. The quicker we do that, the better. The Leader might put that on the agenda for September.