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

I also wanted to speak to amendment No. 5. I apologise, I had not realised it was in this grouping. This is for the regulator to be able to publish its reports publicly. I think the Minister of State mentioned in the Dáil that the Bill already considers a number of provisions designed to ensure transparency and accountability in the performance of the office's function, including requirements to prepare a strategy statement and an annual report, both of which would be published. That is great but having a publishing function for all types of reports that the office would be looking into is not exactly the same as publishing the annual report and the strategy statement. That is different. If the office is doing reports into specific cases or specific regulation issues more broadly, providing that evidence and the detail of the report it had looked into to parliamentarians, advocacy groups and citizens would be really important.
We talked a bit last week about enterprise versus rights and the Minister of State has talked about the AI Act adopting a rights-based model, which is true. While the Act may have identified protections, we do not see that laid out when it comes to the functions of the office. In many ways, some of those protections have been left out. Say, for the regulatory matters that are prescribed in the AI Act itself, the office does not seem to serve the same rights-based model, quite frankly. That is why having things like "ethical and responsible" and "ethical and sustainable" in amendments Nos. 3 and 4 are really important for bringing that to the fore.

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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