Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

Social media is robbing childhood from many young children. It is putting enormous pressure on children, isolating them and creating situations where there is 24-hour bullying. This is leading to all sorts of distortions in relation to children’s understanding of the world.
One suggestion I made to the Taoiseach previously was for the Government to seek to ban the purchase of smartphones by those under 16. That would be far easier to implement. It would not completely erase the challenge of the issue, but it would significantly mitigate it.
In terms of AI, we have a real problem. The Government is too uncritical of AI. AI is leading to the loss of potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country, stealing the creativity of authors, creating a massive demand for energy, putting downward pressure on cognitive ability in education, and putting enormous power in the hands of a few wealthy oligarchs. We need far more global regulation of this enormous power.

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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