Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

Again, the Deputy made strong points, and I fully agree. The intention is to continue to expand the portal. In addition, I have asked my Department to develop what we are calling a roadmap for technology and future skills and a statement of ambition, which will set out where we want this to go. There are all the things the Deputy has just described. In addition to the initial range of courses offered, the National Skills Council comprises a group of people, cross-sector, who are engaging with my Department and me to look at skills gaps that exist. We are holding a number of skills round-table events, where we bring sectoral employers into a room. We will host a construction event later this month, and I will host an AI-specific event then in June. The idea behind that is to look at professional services and how they are being impacted by AI, that is, legal firms, accountancy firms, professional consulting firms and many of those white-collar jobs in which we are seeing graduate recruitment being somewhat paused, perhaps, to understand the implications of that. Then that will inform part of the next planning for the next round of AI Ready and subsequent iterations of that. The National Skills Council will be very much a part of the team attending at that event and will draw from that expert evidence as to where we need to go next and what courses need to be offered.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12