Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

The Minister of State brought up the August deadline. We have actually had two years to transpose the directive, so we are now on a deadline, but the Bill could have been introduced earlier. I know that the two-year period was for officials to work on transposing the legislation, but the problem is that if we only get the legislation delivered at the end of term weeks before the transposition deadline, it makes matters difficult. I know that the officials do huge amounts of work in all Departments when it comes to the transposition of complex EU directives, but it is our job as elected representatives and parliamentarians to scrutinise legislation. This point is not unique to this directive, as it happens all of the time, but we cannot play our constitutional role as elected parliamentarians properly when we have limited time to scrutinise legislation. I know that we are near the deadline, but if we could in future put in a time buffer to permit us to scrutinise legislation properly, then it would be much easier.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:11+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09