Taoiseach's Meetings and Engagements
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-28
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

Deputy Ó Cearúil described himself to me as the Maradona of Kildare hurling one time but anyway. I should not be betraying private conversations but there you are. Apparently, he was.
On the more serious issue of AI, we have the national AI strategy. The Minister, Deputy Lawless, as Deputy Byrne has raised, is on the skills side. The IMF said we are well positioned from a skills perspective, but AI is coming fast. There was not as big a discussion at Davos, in the events I attended. However, there have been significant discussions, particularly when I was in America in March, and some of the people that we sound out there are saying it will be very impactful, AI will change the nature of work and we need to be ready for that. We need to work on that very quickly and very effectively. There may be alternative jobs created but we have to ensure that. We have to make sure that we attract AI investments to the country as well, and at all levels, from research to skills, to basic literacy in society and to SME adopting AI. So far, a lot of SMEs are adopting AI. Our AI literacy levels are relatively high. Per capita , we have one of the most skilled AI workforces in the world. We are well positioned in many respects.
The problem will be that AI will replace a lot of functions and activities and that will have an impact on employment. We are beginning to see signs of that. We need to be careful that we do not pin everything on AI in terms of some of the job announcements that we have witnessed because we also have positive job announcements. There are some very positive investments still happening.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-28