Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-27
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Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal

I acknowledge the relevance of the proposal and policy approach the Deputy has put forward. The Government has to focus on seeing how we can ensure workers are retained within companies. That is absolutely the Deputy's focus. The Government obviously takes the need to retrain and reskill people seriously. I have already outlined on behalf of the Minister for further and higher education the different steps being taken, whether it is the roadmap for technology skills for the future, the statement of ambition on digital and AI skills, the AI micro-qualifications developed by SOLAS or the online platform AI Ready, which is focused on trying to make sure the skills and retraining is provided from Government and all our agencies.
The approach Deputy Ó Cearúil is taking goes to the nub of where we need be in order to try to address this challenge. Certainly, he has been doing a lot of work on this with the officials, the Minister, Deputy Lawless, and the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth. I will engage with them in relation to this debate and on the importance of working with the Deputy on the policy proposal he has put forward. I again acknowledge the Deputy's advocacy and leadership within the political system with regard to the importance of addressing this matter and putting forward tangible proposals as to how that can be achieved. It is very important from a Government perspective that our Departments engage with him to take that on board and, collectively, to try to address something that is evolving rapidly.
I agree with the Deputy that our objective has to be how we protect workers during the transition. Obviously, AI has massive potential to be of benefit, but it has to be something that we ensure we harness for the good of wider society in a way that improves people's quality of life. To achieve that, we have to make sure that employment is maintained, that people have jobs to go to and that AI adds to productivity and the good things we, as a society, experience . Crucial to that is that jobs are protected in the process. The Deputy's policy proposal very much aims to address that. I will relay the points he made to the Minister.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27