Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South

When the Government announced the AI strategy in February, there was a very long press release, but it did not mention the word “jobs”. I want to raise a specific case in my constituency. Covalen made 720 workers redundant, and it blamed 540 of those lay-offs on AI. The company works for Meta. A total of 540 workers were under the two-year mark for statutory severance payments and they also have a six-month cooling off period. The company has refused to meet with their union, even though 30% of the workforce are members of the Communication Workers Union, CWU. In this AI strategy, what will the Government do to strengthen and uphold workers’ rights in the age of AI lay-offs?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16