Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-01
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Joe Conway (IND), Cultural and Educational Panel

I láthair na huaire, táim cinnte nach bhfuil aon cheist ann atá chomh réabhlóideach agus chomh casta leis an gceist seo faoin intleacht shaorga. Is breá an rud é go bhfuil seans againn inniu féachaint ar an mBille seo agus ar an imní atá againn ar an taobh seo den Teach faoin luas lena bhfuil an Bille ag dul ar aghaidh agus faoi na rudaí atá ag gabháil leis an mBille i gcoitinne.
To break it into percentages, I suppose that 90% to 95% of people who speak about AI in forums like this remind me of a conversation I heard in a bar in Longford many years ago, when a parent was discussing the travails in his household because of a son who was trying to negotiate the difficulties of trigonometry. He said to his fellow drinker, “Do you know anything about this trigonometry stuff?” The other guy replied, “I don’t, but I have seen it done.” That is where we are at with artificial intelligence. We do not know anything about it, but we know it is going on somewhere. We know that it is going on now all around us.
The first thing I would say about this legislation, and it has been adverted to by a number of the speakers here, concerns the pace at which it has been thrown at us and its treatment in the other House last night. It does not inspire confidence, in me anyway. This legislation is 106 pages in length. It is very well drafted. It is very well put together by whoever drafted it, but it is the governmental thrust behind it that has me worried.
The key question for the House is whether the framework we are putting in place strikes the right balance. We are talking about oifig intleachta shaorga na hÉireann and its functions. There are positives to it but there are also negatives, and we have to worry about all of the things Senators Ruane and Stephenson mentioned in relation to the regulation of and response to AI. Are we going to have adequate responses to the use of AI to generate harmful and abusive materials? There are all sorts of concerns around defamation and character assassination. There are also wider issues, as referred to this morning on the Order of Business. Kilmeaden, a sleepy bucolic village in Waterford is now going to have a data centre on 108 ha of land, and all the implications that come from that.
With respect to the oifig intleachta shaorga, the Minister of State mentioned in her introduction to the legislation “the nomination and appointment of adjudicators, while expressly safeguarding their independence”. Could she possibly tell us how exactly it is envisaged that we are going to expressly safeguard the independence of those adjudicators?
Senator Stephenson mentioned that none of the big tech companies took up the invitation of our Oireachtas committees to attend. It is a very poor signal of their participation in the democratic processes of our land if they will not even give us a reck by coming along to the parliamentary committee meetings.
I am out of time but Members will gather from the import of what I am saying that while I am sure AI presents great opportunities, I have a profound sense of worry and unease about the whole pig in a poke that we are buying about the great good it can do. Undoubtedly, it can do good but it is fraught with all sorts of difficulties and concerns. I just hope I do not live to see it become the ogre that many people are pointing it out to be.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-01