Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

Deputy Connolly raised the issue of the importance of having children and young people involved. I agree with that. Deputy Paul Murphy and Deputy Connolly raised the issue of what happens at 15 or 16. The education piece is very important, but it is the scale and the overwhelming nature of social media that seem to me to be quite different from the scale associated with earlier restrictive practices like censorship of books or other material in the past. Access to social media is universal; that is the problem. In previous eras, we endeavoured to educate for these reasons. As with most issues, it is a combination of education, prevention and restrictive laws at the same time. We have never had a laissez-faire approach to any issue that could potentially damage children and young people, so we cannot have the same laissez-faire attitude to social media either. However, I take the point that the mechanisms by which we achieve this are important and are still up for debate. The Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Services, Reform and Digitalisation, Deputy Jack Chambers, is working on this with the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Deputy Patrick O’Donovan, as well, because the former of the two has responsibility for the implementation of the EU digital wallet, which is a factor in age verification. There are thorny issues around that as well, which I expect Deputies will come to us on. It is about holding platforms to account over the material they are providing.
I believe I have answered some of what Deputy Paul Murphy said. It is about what people can and should not have access to, and the companies have to respond. That is why an EU approach would be the optimal one. We will act ourselves, obviously, if we do not have that, but we already have significant laws in place. However, this is moving it on. It is interesting that the UK has made announcements. We will examine the Australian model and so forth.
On the AI strategy, Deputy Hayes said jobs were not mentioned. Jobs are critical. I did mention jobs but the point the Deputy is making is that people were laid off in Covalen. We have to be careful, too. Some companies are saying jobs are being lost because of AI but we must ask whether this is the cause in all cases. In other words, is it the application of AI that is causing job losses in some instances or is it decisions to invest hugely in AI and then look for resources elsewhere within an organisation or a company? It could be a bit of both. It is surprising that many of the workers are under the two-year mark. At best, that suggests fairly poor human resource planning. We have labour law here and workers have rights and entitlements. We will again work on the situation raised. I am not familiar with the specifics but I believe there are labour laws governing some aspects. The company should meet the union and engage with it on this.
I discussed most of the issues Deputy Tóibín raised. I would not say we are too uncritical of AI. We are not, but I made a point earlier that it is about challenges and opportunities. We have to look at the opportunities as well as the challenges, and also the reality. The Deputy might not like AI, but for me it has many potential benefits-----

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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