Before I begin, I want to congratulate new the Deputies, Daniel Ennis and Sean Kyne. As a by-election veteran myself, I wish them the very best, although I was elected during Covid so I missed out on the handshakes, hugs and lovely warmth they got.

Recent lay-offs in the tech sector are causing huge stress and anxiety for those receiving redundancy notices, those seeing their colleagues being laid off and the communities affected. My constituency, Dublin Bay South, is home to many tech companies and to the workers who keep them running. Entire communities have been built on the promise of secure, well-paid tech jobs, but this news reminds us of the vulnerability of that model and of our national economy. Meta is cutting 350 jobs here. That proportion of the workforce vastly exceeds global averages. The IT sector here has shed more than 20,000 jobs in the past year alone. How are the tech oligarchs dressing this up? They refer to it as modernisation and flattening teams. That is awful language when they are talking about people's livelihoods and lives. Flattening companies really means throwing staff to the wolves to satisfy shareholders and inflate share prices. Multibillion euro corporations led by Trumpian cheerleaders in Silicon Valley are using AI as cover for years of over-hiring and ruthless cost-cutting. This is AI washing and these companies are showing contempt for the industrial relations mechanisms of the State.

We are seeing this with Covalen, which snubbed an invitation to the Workplace Relations Commission even as it looks to sack 700 people.

They can do so with impunity it seems because our labour laws are too weak.

These corporations know something else too. They know how vulnerable Ireland is. Our economy is dangerously dependent on a handful of tech giants, and they know that the Government is frightened of them and is afraid they will pull investment and move jobs elsewhere, so we are in permanent game of chicken, and the biggest losers are the people now fearing for their futures. As our enterprise spokesperson, Deputy George Lawlor, has said, we have a pool of highly skilled talent who are now being made redundant and so somebody must call the bluff of the tech giants.

What we need, and what Labour has been calling for, is a serious industrial strategy to ensure that Ireland is more than just a host for multinational profits. We need to start cultivating indigenous Irish enterprise and innovation to develop a domestic start-up boom in the AI and tech sectors. We also need stronger collective bargaining rights, stronger protections for workers facing redundancy and serious investment in education, retraining and upskilling. Above all, we need a government that will stand up to the tech billionaires. What we in the Labour Party are asking is: what is the Government's strategy in the face of these job losses to protect tech jobs and to ensure that we diversify our economy and reduce our over-reliance on multinationals?

First of all, I want to take the opportunity to welcome Deputies Daniel Ennis and Séan Kyne. I congratulate them on their election and have no doubt they are looking forward to being effective and productive legislators and, of course, diligent representatives of the people who elected them to Dáil Éireann. It is a great day for them and for their families. We hope their families, in particular, enjoy this historic day for the Deputies and for them.

In respect of employment more generally and the impact of AI and the decisions of certain tech companies, overall, we should not lose sight of the fact that our economy is continuing to grow significantly using GNI as our figure. Modified domestic demand is expected to grow by about 2.1% in 2026. It increased by 4.95% last year. Employment has been fairly consistent year on year. The payroll employee index is up 2.2% year on year, and we are close to 2.8 million workers. We have a very robust and resilient employment story made up of the SME sector as well as the multinationals but we can never look at them as an either-or. They are both inextricably bound together.

I was in Dexcom in Galway recently where a factory has been built that will accommodate 1,000 workers by 2028. At the moment, there are 300 workers there. What was interesting is that in an investment of about €300 million, Dexcom procured about €180 million of that locally through the local supply chain, although the figures might vary. In other words, there are lots of smaller companies that are able to plug into the Dexcom investment. I was at a Japanese pharmaceutical facility in Kerry recently and again it was the same story in terms of the clean room technology and laboratories. We now have companies at a calibre that can actually supply into very sophisticated operations.

While we do need to develop our SME sector, work with Enterprise Ireland on high potential start-ups and do better at scaling up companies, quite a lot of Irish companies have scaled up on the backs of having originally won contracts with a big multinational. Take, for example, all the companies that have supplied into Intel in Kildare. I visited the Intel site about two or three years ago in the midst of the next Fab being built. Nearly every Irish construction company was in there, with different companies doing incredible frontier-type solutions for Intel in terms of clean room technology and so on. We do have a healthy ecosystem but we need to invest more on the skills side as it is key to the AI issue. The skills round table, aiready.ie and the national skills observatory the Ministers, Deputies Lawless and Peter Burke, are putting together are a good solid response to what is happening.

I agree with the Taoiseach that it is not either-or. SMEs are certainly the backbone of our economy but what we have seen is an over-dependence on a handful of small tech companies and that is the concern. Yes, of course, there are many SMEs that are working with them and are in the supply chain but the problem, as the Taoiseach said, is the lack of scaling up of SMEs and the lack of investment in indigenous start-ups.

That is a real concern. We need to diversify the economy. It is not just the Labour Party saying this; we have heard it from every expert who has looked at our economy.

There is a particular concern about workers' rights in tech companies. Let us look at the issue of performance improvement programmes, PIPs. These spurious programmes are being used by tech companies to justify redundancies. They are squeezing those PIPs until they squeak. This is what we are seeing. They are using legal loopholes to justify making redundancies. There is an issue about workers' rights in tech companies. At a minimum, what we have called for in the Labour Party, is the introduction of stronger workers' rights protections to force big tech to play fair amid these plans to lay off workers and to expose this issue of AI washing.

Thank you, Deputy. Your time is up. The Taoiseach to respond.

Tech companies are making huge profits while saying that they need to cut costs.

There are two dimensions to this. In itself, AI will change the world of work. We should not be blind to that. We need to prepare for it. There is investment in skills, in particular, and thankfully, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, has identified Ireland as one of the top countries in terms of an AI-skilled population and workforce. Equally though, I accept that because of the extraordinary investments some of the global players are making in AI , they are cutting costs in terms of human resources. It may not necessarily all be AI driven. There are certain investment decisions being taken. One of the negative consequences of that is a cutting of labour forces globally, not just in Ireland. We have to prepare for that. We have strong labour protection laws in this country and frameworks that govern any redundancies or situations pertaining to workers' rights. I would not understate the protections that are there.

Thank you, Taoiseach.

On the small business front, regulations are a big feedback from the SME sector. They are saying to us that they are over-regulated and need simplification.

Thank you, Taoiseach. We will move to Deputy Cairns.