Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-09
============================================================

Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

In relation to amendment No. 13, this amendment appears to replace part of section 14 with what is effectively the existing section 15, dealing with resignation of members of the board, but changes the recipient of the resignation from the Minister to the Government.
I thank Senator Stephenson for her amendment. However, I do not consider it necessary. The matters addressed in the amendment are already provided for in the Bill. Section 15 sets out the procedure by which a member of the board, including the chairperson, may resign from office and specifies when such a resignation takes effect. The only substantive change proposed by the amendment is to require resignations to be submitted to the Government rather than to the Minister. I do not consider that this would provide any additional safeguard or governance benefit. The Bill consistently assigns responsibility for board-related matters to the Minister, providing a clear line of accountability and administration. Accordingly, as the matter is already addressed in the Bill and the proposed change would merely substitute the Government for the Minister without materially altering the operation of the provision, I do not propose to accept the amendment.

---

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/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:11+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09