Artificial Intelligence Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central It was actually over two years ago when I made that very point at our own Ard-Fheis in terms of the challenges. There is no question that it is harming cognitive development and making many children’s lives much more challenging, difficult and, in some cases, miserable. It can facilitate bullying and much worse. It is ruining childhoods for too many children, so action needs to be taken. I respect Deputy Malcolm Byrne’s right to be agnostic on some solutions, but we have to work on a number of fronts. I can recall the case with other addictive substances, such as tobacco. People always said that if we banned it, or banned the pack of ten, people would find a way around it. Kids used to get single cigarettes at the time we banned it. We just made it harder. It does not mean there is complete compliance or complete coverage, but at least we are making it more restrictive and denormalising what has now become normal. I suggest there is an incremental series of steps that we have to take in respect of this. Our preference is for an EU-wide approach. I attended a meeting recently hosted by President Macron on the banning of social media for under-15s and under-16s. The European Commission, with President von der Leyen, is bringing forward proposals in respect of this quite shortly. Commissioner McGrath, whom I met on Friday, said this to me as well. An EU-wide approach basically means taking on the platforms and saying to the platforms that they are preventing access. That would be more straightforward for the platforms to implement. It would avoid gaps in application and enforcement for regulators. An EU-wide approach to digital services, because they are provided across borders, would be a more effective way of doing this. I was taken by the Oireachtas committee’s report. It was well researched, to be fair. I accept we do need to debate this. The precise mechanisms by which access to these platforms would be prohibited need to be worked out. I also accept what Deputy Malcolm Byrne has said about the views of children and young people being ascertained. We have a history of doing that, in fairness – even before the Department of children was established. I remember the idea that one would consult children and young people being laughed at in the early 2000s. Now it is the norm. Regarding child poverty last year, we convened a group of young people to consult on the relevant issues. We do it across the board, and there is no reason we should not do it for AI. I will come back to Deputy Ó Cearúil on his question on specific times and actions. The more important thing is to get the substantive stuff done. What is interesting is that, in some of the economic appraisals, Ireland is doing quite well in attracting investment because of AI and the levels of skills within the country already. We have to look at this as both a challenge and an opportunity. Sometimes too much of the debate can be on the challenge side of it, with not enough on the opportunity. I will come back to the matter. Deputy McGreehan is spot on in terms of the skills issue. Skillnet will have a major role. One of the issues we will discuss with the social partners, and which we have encountered in recent times, relates to our having used some of the fund for skills, the National Training Fund, for universities and so on. There is an argument that we should try to ring-fence some of that fund for AI skills training. There will have to be a massive nationwide programme on upskilling because the focus should be on redeployment. There are opportunities within the public sector in terms of changing the nature of work, and new opportunities to redeploy and maybe achieve more effective outcomes as a result. Training is going to be key, and we will consider front-loading funding in respect of that issue. Deputy Ó Murchú also raised Skillnet, the under-16s and the addictive algorithms. These are the issues that I understand the European Commission will be addressing. I would make the point, however, that last year we brought in a restriction in schools concerning the utilisation of smartphones, and the Deputies opposite lampooned and attacked it. --- 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/dail/2026-06-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-16