Latest news with #ConorO'Neill
RTÉ News
2 days ago
- Business
- RTÉ News
EU may back national trade bans with Israeli settlements
The EU is considering giving its backing to member states that wish to block imports from illegal Israeli settlements at a national level, under measures set to be considered by the bloc next week. The proposal is one of several options being examined after a review found that Israel was likely in breach of the human rights obligations of the EU-Israel Association Agreement in relation to its war in Gaza. An options paper prepared by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas concludes that member states could potentially be permitted to block imports from settlements "at their respective national level for public policy reasons". The options paper, seen by RTÉ News, suggests that member states could take note of such national measures or "clarify the permissibility" of such actions. EU foreign ministers to meet EU foreign ministers will consider the options paper at a meeting of the bloc's Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Tuesday. Proponents of banning trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have long argued that individual member states could do so under a "public policy" clause in EU trade law. But the options paper is the first time it has been identified by the bloc as a potential measure in relation to Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza. The development is significant for the Irish Government in the context of the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban trade with the settlements. The option paper suggests that member states could issue a joint statement taking note that certain countries have blocked imports from the settlements at a national level - under a clause in the EU's general imports regulation. This would not require the unanimous approval of member states. While the Irish Government maintains it does not require such an endorsement, the inclusion of the proposal in official EU discussions lends legitimacy to its position. 'Really significant' Conor O'Neill, the head of policy at Christian Aid and the spokesperson for the Campaign to Pass the Occupied Territories Bill, described it as "a really significant shift". "For years the EU has doggedly insisted that trade was an exclusive EU competence and therefore a national-level ban just wasn't possible," Mr O'Neill said. "Now, for the first time, the EU has recognised that individual member states may ban trade with Israel's illegal settlements under the 'public policy' derogation in EU trade law, exactly as we have argued for seven years." Tánaiste Simon Harris has repeatedly encouraged other similarly minded member states to pursue their own legislation to ban the import of goods from the settlements. Ireland is the only EU country pursuing such a ban. The measure is one of several options that the document proposes as falling outside the scope of the association agreement, which governs the EU's trade and political relationship with Israel. Number of options For the first time, it also outlines a number of options that it could take within the agreement itself, such as a full or partial suspension of the pact, and a suspension or termination of Israel's participation in EU programmes. It also says foreign ministers could consider pausing or limiting cooperation with Israel, or freezing or delaying new initiatives or partnerships. Most of these more severe measures would require the unanimous approval of the bloc's 27 member states, or a majority of them. There is thus unlikely to be enough support for them. The European Union External Action Service, the bloc's diplomatic service, concluded in a review last month that there were "indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement". It pointed to assessments by independent international institutions. Israel dismissed the review and said it exemplified the "double standards" the EU uses against Israel. It has long argued that its war in Gaza is both lawful and necessary to destroy Hamas following the 7 October attacks.
Irish Post
01-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Post
ADOPTING AI: Irish entrepreneurs reveal the benefits of using artificial intelligence
TECHNOLOGICAL tools are transforming the way the world works. Artificial intelligence is now in use across all sectors, from IT to health and retail to transportation, legal and financial services. Whether automating mundane tasks and streamlining operations such as customer service, or for improving health and safety or data processing, the technology, which enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving and decision making, is revolutionising industries across the board. AI is widely regarded at the future and there are plenty of Irish firms who are already committing to the changes or helping to lead the revolution. In Bristol, the Irish founded cybersecurity firm OnSecurity has just launched a new service which uses AI to improve their offering while reducing the cost to clients. Originally the firm, which was founded by Kildare native Conor O'Neill, developed software which allows its users to test and find security issues in their systems that would leave them vulnerable to hackers. Last month they updated their offering to launch the first AI-augmented pentesting service to hit the market – which they say offers the perfect solution for their clients. 'The new service combines the creativity and expertise of human security professionals with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, optimising the entire security testing process from initial reconnaissance to final reporting,' O'Neill, explains. Over in Limerick, tech start-up Zerve has created a platform which allows AI and data developers to work seamlessly together. CEO Phily Hayes, who co-founded the firm in 2021 with Jason Hilary and Greg Michaelson, says the product offers a 'secure, productive environment in which to explore, build, test and deliver data and AI products in record time'. This week, the business leaders took time out to tell The Irish Post more about their business, their industries and the importance of AI… Conor O'Neill, CEO at OnSecurity Conor O'Neill, CEO at OnSecurity Born in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, Mr O'Neill moved to the UK in his 30s. Now aged 43, he commutes from his home in Liverpool to the office in Bristol. When and where was your company founded? We launched in 2018 in Bristol. What inspired you to create the business? OnSecurity was born out of frustration with the inefficiency of the processes surrounding penetration testing - getting quotes, booking a test, receiving the reports, and integrating the results into workflows in a meaningful way was all very manual and had a lot of friction. Pentesting - or penetration testing, sometimes called ethical hacking - is a service where our consultants attempt to hack into the applications or systems of our customers, finding weaknesses so that our customers can fix the issues before they are hacked for real. Tell us about your product/solution? We have created an AI augmented pentesting platform that makes the entire pentesting process, from booking to delivery to remediation, as simple as possible for our customers. OnSecurity's platform makes procurement and management of pentesting and pentesting outcomes easy and pain-free compared to traditional models. Our customers are typically fast-moving tech businesses of various sizes/stages who often require quick, efficient testing and reporting to meet compliance or client requirements. Pentesting is required or strongly recommended in various sectors, including fintech, healthcare, software and technology, telecoms etc. What benefits does it bring to your clients? Quick example - it typically takes up to a month to schedule a pentest with another vendor due to multiple phone calls and slow exchange of information. With our platform, booking a pentest takes about two minutes. Once clients are on the platform, they can schedule, book and manage their test all in one place. We aim to simplify every step of the pentest value chain. We recently launched AI-augmented pentest delivery, which makes actual pentesting significantly more efficient. Human testers can now focus on high impact, high quality work while AI handles low-value, tedious, repetitive tasks and most of the reporting. How do you use AI within your service? We use AI pretty much everywhere now to amplify our offering to clients. By combining human expertise and AI, we are transforming the way security testing is performed and delivered with lower costs without compromising quality. We use AI to generate quotes in real-time, for automating repetitive tasks such as reporting, to improve test coverage by enabling broader and deeper assessments and to improve efficiency, allowing human testers to focus on high-impact analysis. We have also just released an MCP server which talks to our API so that our customers can ask anything they want about their security programme. Operationally, we are rolling out AI more and more across the business, in particular in the sales and software engineering areas, to improve efficiency and throughput with the staff we have. What are the greatest benefits/challenges of AI as a tool for your industry? AI increases efficiency, lowers costs and expands coverage however, it is not a replacement for human expertise. We need to rapidly become operationally AI-native and do more with fewer resources. Everyone on the team must become excellent at using AI to amplify their work, but not rely on it. The way we have integrated AI in our platform creates a number of benefits for clients. It saves security teams time and money, improves resource allocation across teams, handles tedious, low-value tasks such as reporting and frees up human testers to evaluate high impact tasks and findings It also provides detailed contextualised reports with remediation guidance and aids faster, clearer communication. Some challenges the industry might face include the fact that AI lacks creativity and human logic, so cannot replace human expertise (just yet!). There are regulative compliance or ethical frameworks to consider. For a critical service like pentesting - human assurance and accountability will always be required. How challenging has it been to get clients to accept the use of AI services over traditional ones? What I find interesting is that, despite the noise and clamour around AI, our customers generally haven't been asking about it/for it that much just yet. A lot of the pentesting market is regulatory driven and the customers need a given result and aren't too fussed about what the technology that gets them that result is. I expect this to change quite rapidly over the next 18 months or so. What is your business goal for 2025? Continue to innovate in the pentesting space as we have always done. To continue to grow our revenues and customer base and to become excellent at using AI operationally. What's the biggest challenge facing your industry today? Commoditisation, saturation and competition from pure AI pentest vendors are the biggest challenges in the industry right now. How can it be overcome? We must continue to differentiate and innovate as we have always done. Continue to focus on the customer pain points. We are designing our company strategy around Jevon's paradox - whenever something gets cheaper, people buy more of it. As the price of pentesting inevitably reduces, people will buy more pentesting, meaning the management and orchestration of pentesting will become ever more important. We already excel in this area and will continue to focus our product development here. How would you describe your job? Bloody hectic but rewarding. I am extremely proud to be part of the change and look forward to seeing how we progress OnSecurity to continue to simplify pentesting for our clients. What's the best life lesson you have learnt in your career to date? 'It's never as good as you think and it's never as bad as you think!' What's your favourite thing to do when not working? I enjoy playing with my son, running and playing guitar. Phily Hayes, CEO at Zerve Phily Hayes, CEO at Zerve Hailing from New Inn in Tipperary, Mr Hayes now lives in Cahir. The 34-year-old co-founded Zerve in 2021. It is headquartered at the University of Limerick but now has representatives in nine countries across the globe. When and where was your company founded? May 2021, in Tipperary. What inspired you to create the business? The understanding we had that amazingly talented code first data teams weren't having the impact they should have, we set about trying to solve that for them and their organisations. What is your product/solution? Zerve is the operating system for developing and delivering data and AI products. Most tools on the market today solve isolated problems, but Zerve unifies the entire lifecycle—from planning and coding, to provisioning infrastructure, and deploying into production… in a single platform. The multi-agent platform helps humans and AI agents to work side by side and is designed for organisations that are creating AI products built to scale with the ability to deliver value. What problem does it solve and for who? Zerve tackles one of the most persistent challenges in enterprise AI and data science: translating prototypes and isolated experiments into real-world, production-grade products. In many organisations, data and AI projects stall after the proof-of-concept phase—not because of lack of talent or innovation, but because of bottlenecks in infrastructure, cross-team collaboration, and deployment workflows. We empower data scientists, machine learning engineers, and analytics teams to collaboratively build, iterate, and deploy AI and data products without getting sidelined by DevOps or system integration issues. What benefits does it bring to your clients? Zerve accelerates the journey from idea to impact, giving clients a faster time-to-value and enabling them to deliver a higher volume of high-quality data and AI projects. Zerve frees up experienced team members to focus on innovation and problem-solving. This means data teams are faster, more productive, more aligned, and more impactful. Zerve improves customer insights, optimizes operations, and supports new revenue streams. How do you use AI within your product/solution? Zerve is a platform for building AI, however we also use AI deeply within the platform, with breakthrough features like our Agent which works like a full stack Data & AI professional on your time. Unlike traditional AI code assistants that offer narrow, task-specific suggestions, the Zerve Agent operates with a broader, end-to-end understanding of the project lifecycle. It can scope a project, architect a solution, write production-ready code, manage infrastructure provisioning, and troubleshoot issues as they arise - all through natural language interactions and intelligent automation. Whether the goal is to spin up a new data pipeline, deploy a machine learning model, or run diagnostics on a production system, the Agent acts as an expert teammate to enable teams to move faster and reduce errors. Zerve not only supports AI development, it reshapes how organisations build and scale intelligent systems. What are the greatest challenges/benefits of AI as a tool for your industry? The speed of change can be a challenge, but we mainly view it as an opportunity and an exciting time to be working with this sort of technology. How challenging has it been to get clients to accept the use of AI services over traditional ones? We work with expert teams who have been working with AI for years, long before ChatGPT made AI a universal topic of conversation, so our teams do not have this concern. What is your business goal for 2025? Continuing to support some of the most talented teams in world using our solution, like NASA, HPE & Canal+, while also building an even bigger RnD footprint here in Ireland. What is the biggest challenge facing your industry today? The speed of change. How can it be overcome? Remain agile, nimble and open minded to the boundaries of what's possible constantly moving. How would you describe your job? Startup CEO. What's the best life lesson you have learnt in your career to date? Celebrate the wins. What's your favourite thing to do when not working? Hang out at home with my two kids and my wife. See More: AI, OnSecurity, Zerve
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First Post
27-05-2025
- Business
- First Post
EU member Ireland moves against Israel over Gaza clean-up operation, to ban imports from occupied areas
If the bill is passed, Ireland would make importing goods from the occupied regions of Palestine a criminal offence. However, the law will not seek a boycott of Israeli products read more A drone view shows displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents set up near the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli offensive, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City on February 17, 2025. Reuters File Ireland has moved to table a bill that would ban imports from the occupied territories of Palestine, a first such move by an EU member to curtail products made by Israeli settlements in Gaza. 'Given the scale and gravity of what we're now seeing with the deprivation of aid and the bombardment of Gaza … this is an appropriate course of action to take,' Simon Harris, the country's deputy prime minister, told the Financial Times. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The settlements consist of residential, agricultural, and commercial developments in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, located beyond Israel's internationally recognised borders. How will it affect trade? If the bill is passed, Ireland would make importing goods from the occupied regions of Palestine a criminal offence. However, the law will not seek a boycott of Israeli products. A ban on exports from the occupied territories is largely symbolic, given that trade is limited to physical goods like dates, oranges, olives, and some timber, with a total value of just €685,000 over the four years from 2020 to 2024. Conor O'Neill, the head of advocacy and policy at Christian Aid Ireland, said, 'This is a massive welcome step, it is the first time a trade measure of this kind has been applied to Israel by any EU country. After decades of saying and repeating that illegal settlements are totally illegal and that the EU is opposed to them, this is the first time that words are being matched with action.' EU reviews deal with Israel Last week, the EU ordered a review of its cooperation deal with Israel and Britain halted trade talks with it as European nations took a tougher line over the Gaza war. France renewed its commitment to recognise a Palestinian state, a day after Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily hit back at Britain, France and Canada for threatening action over his country's military offensive and blockade of Gaza. EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said 'a strong majority' of the 27 member states at a foreign ministers' meeting backed the move in a bid to pressure Israel. 'Countries see that the situation in Gaza is untenable, and what we want is to really help the people, and… to unblock the humanitarian aid so that it will reach the people,' Kallas told journalists. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
Irish Post
12-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Post
Cybersecurity firm's new AI service provides ‘optimal partnership between technology and expertise'
AN Irish-founded cybersecurity firm has launched a new service which uses AI to improve their offering while reducing the cost to clients. This month Bristol-based OnSecurity launched the first AI-augmented pentesting service to hit the market – which they say offers the perfect solution for their clients. 'The new service combines the creativity and expertise of human security professionals with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, optimising the entire security testing process from initial reconnaissance to final reporting,' the firm, which was founded by Kildare native Conor O'Neill, explains. Alongside this service, the firm has also introduced a continuous assurance subscription model that provides year-round security monitoring and validation between traditional penetration test. Conor O'Neill is the founder and CEO of OnSecurity "The pentesting industry has operated on the same model for decades, with rising costs but minimal innovation in delivery," said O'Neill, who hails from Leixlip. "Our AI-augmented approach challenges this status quo by enhancing what our experts do best while automating repetitive tasks, resulting in more thorough testing at a significantly lower price point. 'The hybrid approach ensures consistent methodology application across all assets while maintaining the creative problem-solving abilities of human experts. "The integration of AI enables broader and deeper testing across applications and infrastructure.' "This isn't about replacing humans with AI," O'Neill added. "It's about creating the optimal partnership between technology and expertise. "We're using AI and automation to amplify our security experts' efforts, ensuring they spend most of their time on high-impact, high-quality testing. The AI handles low-impact or tedious and repetitive work, as well as comprehensive reporting, freeing our human testers to apply their creativity and judgement where it matters most. "This hybrid approach means we're delivering superior results while reducing costs—a win-win for our clients." See More: Launch, OnSecurity, Pentesting
The Irish Sun
29-04-2025
- Sport
- The Irish Sun
Punchestown Festival CEO reveals HUGE number of pints to be sold over five-day horse racing bonanza
AN estimated 132,000 pints will be knocked back over the course of the Punchestown Festival as punters bask in the welcome sunshine. The five-day meet 2 It's always a highlight in the Irish jumps calendar and this year is no exception with 20,000 punters expected through the gates between today and Saturday Credit: Alamy 2 The featured race of day one will be the William Hill Champion Chase at 6pm That gaudy drinks number was just one of several eye-catching figures predicted around the extent of revelling that's set to unfold across the midlands venue. As regards food to go with all of those beverages, it's estimated that three and a half tonnes of fresh vegetables, 60 kilos of artisan cheeses and 15,000 canapés and desserts will be served by staff. To cope with the demands of their biggest annual showcase, Festival organisers employ a total of 68 chefs and 760 hospitality staff. Read More On Irish Sport Punchestown CEO Conor O'Neill hailed: "There is something really special about the buzz ahead of this year's Punchestown Festival. "It's even more than the brilliant achievements by our horses, jockeys, owners and trainers throughout the season. 'It's the local and national enthusiasm and pride that are reflected not only in bookings and sales but in requests for information, signage, inquiries about how they get involved. 'People Make Punchestown and there is a great appetite and goodwill for the event this year even more than previous. Most read in Horse Racing "Combine this with a forecast that we can only wish for and we are in for a magic week." Tuesday's card is highlighted by the clash of Marine Nationale and Fact to File in the Champion Chase. America's oldest horse racing track lays abandoned after closing down following 170 years of history Ahead of that tussle, Marine Nationale trainer Barry O'Connell The bookies have Mullins' star the 5-4 favourite for the €300,000 Grade 1 contest, but the Kildare-based trainer and former stockbroker reckons the bookies have got the market wrong. Connell said: 'He's actually improved from Cheltenham, both physically and mentally. 'I couldn't be any happier. All I can say is that we're ready for it. 'We're the champion chaser and if Fact To File and Willie want to take us on, bring it on. "I'd imagine it will be one of the races of the week.' Mullins has a brilliant record in the Grade 1 feature winning six out of the last seven renewals, but Connell is not worried and thinks Marine Nationale has improved from his Cheltenham victory. He added: 'We've been playing catch-up all year with Marine Nationale. 'He missed most of his novice season so that's why you're seeing such a rate of improvement from race to race this season and that's why I think he can improve again from Cheltenham to Punchestown. 'He basically had no race at Cheltenham. He dawdled around and then took off from the back of the last. He didn't even take a blow after it. "Mentally and physically he has been in super shape since the Champion Chase. I couldn't be any happier.'
