Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Aindrias Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

Ireland has strong growth in AI and high demand for skills but those entry-level roles are reducing and graduates are going to struggle to gain the experience required in that growth and to be ready to take part in that growth. A whole cohort of new graduates finished their exams a few weeks ago and are waiting on results and preparing to enter the labour market. Ireland's economy, as the Minister says, is especially exposed to AI with about 63% of employment estimated to be affected to some degree or another. That reflects our concentration in knowledge-intensive sectors. It makes Ireland both a leader in AI adoption but also very exposed to labour market disruption. Employers are increasingly optimising for productivity and they are doing that by hiring experienced workers. That is going to threaten the pipeline of future talent. What targeted interventions are being considered to sustain graduates with clear pathways? These could be internships or incentives for entry-level hiring. Crucially, how is the Government going to ensure Ireland's AI success does not come at the expense of opportunities for younger people?

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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