Joe O'Reilly urges rural strategy amid tariff risks and AI

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Dr. Macdonald. It's been a fascinating evening listening to your contributions and your responses to specific questions. I think it's extraordinarily interesting. I think a very exciting issue that arose there in your response to Deputy Bork when you talked about us attracting the high-caliber research people from America. That's a fascinating concept, and the workings out of that could be great. I am meeting a lot of... I'm in a minor digression. I'll go back to my few questions then. But I'm meeting a lot of... I have had a lot of extended family home recently from America, and I'm meeting a lot of American visitors here who are all saying they're contemplating relocation for a whole lot of reasons. So there might well be great potential in that, just based on anecdotal evidence. So it's an interesting one. But the entire evening is interesting. Now, if I get you correctly, I think the trust of what you're saying in relation to the tariffs is that they won't dislocate, Dr. Macdonald, existing, in any significant fashion, existing investment in Ireland. That they're not likely to put anything out of Ireland, and that's a general or conventional wisdom, but that they may slow down what would potentially come in. And in that scenario, I'd like you to, if you would, expand a bit on where you see our potential for a replacement, Indigenous, in terms of Indigenous economic activity. And, of course, in mice, it's a bit scary when you talk about the drink and the food being at risk, because in the region that I come from, food production and food processing and all of that is huge. The processing and the value-added product and exporting new, improved product. So you might comment, first, please, on where you see us developing an alternative sort of thing, including, of course, green energy, AI, whatever. But if you could give us a few specifics, like the one, indeed, about the academics. It's a very, very good and very, very complicated question. Thank you for your point on the headhunting academics. Really, strike while the iron is hot. This is the opportunity to bring them over. In many ways, one of the things about technological change and technological disruption and innovation is that you often don't know in advance what's going to happen. You don't know what the new technologies are going to be or how they're going to play out or what's going to be successful. If we knew that, things would be very, very easy indeed. It's specific types of product that are currently at risk, you know, whiskey, butter, areas like that. And that implies it would be very, very specific job losses, potentially. And I suppose that was why I was emphasising the point about it. And that's very scary for my region. It is, it is. And that's why I was saying general rather than targeted, which enrages the Trump administration and brings the tariffs to such a level that it might make the problem worse. So the strategy, in my view, should be just go for a general rate. It doesn't focus on bourbon or whatever it might be, which causes a pushback for us. I would say there are a lot of economic opportunities for rural Ireland into the future if we can design our policies in such a way that doesn't put barriers there. So, for example, if we can arrive at a place where we're more comfortable with working from home, then that means that businesses don't have, or workers don't have to physically be in Dublin or Galway or Limerick or Cork all the time. They can be in the Midlands or the North West or Mayo or wherever it might be. So there are soft areas where we can mop up and ensure that more of the jobs in existing sectors are based outside of the city areas. So that would be one thing that I think would be very, very important for rural Ireland not to miss as an opportunity. And that can be done in terms of the public sector as well. The public sector job doesn't have to be in Dublin anymore. It could be done in any part. It could be done anywhere in the country. So there are existing ones there for sure. In terms of new economic opportunities, I would suggest, again, in terms of developing out that innovation system, that every region should have a champion campus, which, for example, what if some of the former ITs were able to, with government support, attract some of those academics, which would over time massively improve the rankings of those places, and they would be generating high-potential spin-off industries or new technologies from those areas. There's no reason that that can't happen. And just because it hasn't happened in the past, resources haven't been put into those areas. Again, so in many ways I'm talking about jobs or sectors that may not even exist yet. But you give yourselves the resources, educationally, but making sure that people stay in those areas and have a reason to stay in those areas and don't go to Dublin or don't go to London. Keep them there. And therefore, over time, an economic development is a long story. It's a story of decades rather than years. So rather than pointing to a specific, we should get into artificial intelligence, and of course we should get into developing artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence is going to kill more jobs than it's going to create, unfortunately, albeit a lot of those jobs will be in cities rather than in rural areas. So that isn't a fully satisfactory answer to your question, but it would be the type of strategy that I would pursue, and certainly it is something that we would intend to look at more in the future. That will be fascinating. Thank you very much. Now, you do agree, I presume, that to deal with the housing issue we have to have a major infrastructural investment in water and energy and all of that to create the conditions where we can develop housing. I presume you agree with that. I do. Yeah, you do. So there's a need. You do say, though, that one of the limitations to infrastructural development is obviously the lack of capacity, the lack of personnel to do it. Yeah. And you say we should make it easier to enter construction. Yes. I would like you to say how could we do that, and secondly, how could we, or do you think we could attract people back from abroad in the construction sector? And then I have another question that I'm very anxious that I get you to answer. Yeah, no, it's a great question, and obviously we have far less construction workers now than we had in the past. And, of course, as you know, one of the things that happened was construction came to be perceived as an extremely volatile and risky profession. It's not. But because of the great financial crash, and because there was such an avalanche of jobs lost, such devastation, people were told for a decade, don't go into construction, and you end up with a shortfall of construction workers when it comes around. And because we are close to full employment, not necessarily full employment, but close to full employment, the incentive for people to switch careers to something totally different, like construction, with very specific skills, is challenging. So, first of all, how do we convince existing workers become construction workers? Because the pool of unemployed workers is quite low. Second of all, how do we convince people in their teens and early 20s to choose construction? And the third possibility is how do we get people to come from other countries, whether returning Irish or others to come? So, to get them to come, we'll probably have to give them incentives. We have to find a place for them to live, which is the chicken and egg. But we have to make it attractive for people to go into construction, whether it's pay, whether it's terms and conditions, whether it's pension benefits down the line. So, that should be an immediate strategy. It should be an immediate strategy for how do we create a strategy for inducing workers into construction. A lot of that, of course, is going to be about terms and conditions. Obviously, there might be some pushback from the construction industry, but over the longer term, one big strategy, which would take a fundamental rethink about how we do construction, is can the state over the medium to long term be itself a player, even if it's just subcontracting? But could the state be a big construction employer in the sense of... Of giving the jobs. ...over the long term, providing the jobs in terms of local authorities for management and maintenance, but also that would make construction be perceived as a less volatile profession, and it is a profession, and that would induce more people to do that. It's a respectable, effectively a public service job. And over the longer term, it wouldn't be a short term solution, but over the medium to long term, with that in place then, it ensures we don't have to say another of these situations again. It also puts a kind of a ballast within the housing market, which gives it a bit of balance over the longer term... I actually have a son who every time I meet him for lunch puts that point to me. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a very interesting one. Can I lastly, because it's the contemporary debate, bring you back to the question of the short term measures, the energy credits, etc. Sure. And if I understand you correctly, you'd think that the good strategy or the correct strategy is to invest in, is to target money at those most in need, is to cushion their passage through in prices of grocery increases, etc. And not, and to suspend the temporary short term measures. Am I understanding you correct? Yeah. I don't want to drop you into party politics, but am I getting you a drink? No, and I completely understand the rationale because we don't have the systems in place necessarily, immediately to protect all the people you need to protect. It is completely understandable that you would put a plaster in place as a temporary measure to protect. But I think where we need to get up to eventually is to have a welfare system and a wage system and all of these things. The problem is that the cost of living is too high. And the kind of jobs the Deputy Nash spoke of, maybe, the temporary. Yeah, absolutely. It's a protective... So the issue is that there's an imbalance between people's incomes and the cost of living. But there's not an imbalance for everybody's income and the cost of living. But what I would like to see is how can we use our resources to protect the most vulnerable in society. So one that we know that there is broad support for is a second tier child benefit which would potentially half child poverty on the island of Ireland. Those type of measures. So if we can fix the welfare system including through tapered payments for poorer working households the problem is the administrative we've waited too long maybe to do it this year but we should be looking at can we put all those in place for Budget 2027 for example and therefore bring up those levels to sufficient adequacy that they're able to thrive with an Irish society and the cost of living crisis. That's very fascinating in the context of the debate. Thank you. Thanks, Chair. Thank you.