Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-15
============================================================

Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

I thank the Minister of State for coming back to the House. I know when we left off we were talking about the question that Senator Ruane talked about, which is the term "gagging" and how it can be evocative and uncomfortable because no one wants to feel they are doing that. However, we strongly believe the provisions laid out in this Bill will make it very difficult for the CEO to express opinions on Government policy and to be scrutinised as a witness in committees. In order for the CEO to properly regulate and support Government policy, they need to be able to say what is good but also what is bad, and the provisions laid out in this Bill do not allow for that.
That is why we have amendments Nos. 35 and 36. They are to allow the CEO to have opinions on Government policy and to appear before committees. Without that, we are effectively gagging them, even if that is not the intention.

---

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/2026-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:16+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-15