Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-26 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central There are two dimensions to this. In itself, AI will change the world of work. We should not be blind to that. We need to prepare for it. There is investment in skills, in particular, and thankfully, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, has identified Ireland as one of the top countries in terms of an AI-skilled population and workforce. Equally though, I accept that because of the extraordinary investments some of the global players are making in AI , they are cutting costs in terms of human resources. It may not necessarily all be AI driven. There are certain investment decisions being taken. One of the negative consequences of that is a cutting of labour forces globally, not just in Ireland. We have to prepare for that. We have strong labour protection laws in this country and frameworks that govern any redundancies or situations pertaining to workers' rights. I would not understate the protections that are there. --- 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/2026-05-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-26