James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to her new role. Having witnessed her handling of RTÉ, her response to the AI revolution will be child's play in comparison to the challenges she faced as Chair of that committee. I welcome her appointment to this post and it is a very good decision by the Government to have a Minister of State dedicated to this important issue.

I welcome this debate on how we can harness AI for the greater good in business, the economy and society. Let us be clear, this is not a speculative conversation. It is not on the horizon, it is here right now. As the Taoiseach rightly stated, the AI revolution is the most profound economic shift since the industrial revolution. We heard pithy remarks and saw eyerolls during Leaders' Questions when that statement was made but let us look at the facts. In healthcare, AI is diagnosing cancer, tuberculosis, and diabetes faster and more accurately than ever before. During the Covid-19 pandemic, AI accelerated drug discovery and patient management, saving lives. In finance AI-powered algorithims by Visa and MasterCard are detecting fraudulent transactions in real time. In agriculture, AI-driven drones are optimising crop yields and soil health. In my own field in the legal sector, AI is expediting justice by automating document review which is cutting costs and delays.

These are not projections, they are realities. PwC estimates that AI will add €1.8 trillion in value to northern Europe while Accenture predicts €148 billion could be added to Ireland's GDP by 2038. Ireland is uniquely placed to lead. We are home to 16 of the world's top 20 tech companies.

We have the highest number of STEM graduates per capitain Europe and more than 40 companies developing AI technologies. Two thirds of Ireland's 2,200 indigenous tech startups employ more than 52,000 people, so when AI sceptics shrug their shoulders, I say that turning our backs on AI is turning our backs on Ireland's future. It does nothing for the tens of thousands of people whose jobs depend on the tech sector or for the millions of Irish citizens who will be impacted by AI's advancement.

As many Deputies have already said during this debate, we cannot separate AI from energy, but unlike what I heard from the Labour Party speaker, in my view data centres are the backbone of AI infrastructure. They are vilified, as we heard earlier this afternoon, in a way that is filled with much whataboutery. The Labour Party spoke earlier about having a moratorium on data centres. That is a Trumpian policy. It is essentially saying to stop funding something altogether because we have a concern about it and that we will worry about all the problems when we have decided what the solutions should give. To add to that whataboutery, it was highlighted how, in the constituency of the Deputy who made that contribution, there are benefits from data centres in the form of district heating that can flow from data centres.

We need to have an honest and clear debate about data centres. There are jokes about people having mobile phones meaning they do not have a right to debate. I do not accept that contention. If you own a mobile phone, you can still criticise data centres. We have to be honest and acknowledge that the technological advancement that we all rely on day-to-day is fuelled by data centres. We cannot have this approach where data centres should just be somewhere else. That is the negative philosophy of NIMBYism that prevents homes from being built in all our constituencies across the country. We have to be honest and truthful about that.

In the same way that we should not be fearful about AI when it comes to the innovations that it will bring, while ensuring that we regulate it in an appropriate and balanced manner, it is not just one side of the equation where data centres consume and sap so much energy and therefore we must oppose them at all costs, but that data centres create and fuel demand. That type of demand can in turn drive the type of investment that we need to see in renewable energy in this country. We need to see improvements in the amount of offshore wind that we will develop over the next five, ten or 15 years. Data centres have a role to play in fuelling AI and innovation but also in contributing to the investment that we need to see in the renewable energy sector. This is not a zero-sum game. The debate has complexity. We have to be honest about that and reflect that.

As Mario Draghi's recent report highlighted, Europe is falling behind the USA and China on AI due to over-regulation. The former ECB governor warned that Europe has effectively imposed tariffs on itself.

See this speech in context