Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-30
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Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

I too wish to state, as I said to the Minister, how concerned I am about the short space of time we have had to really scrutinise something as important as this. The time is just too short for amendments with all the other legislation at this time of year that is piled on together. I take from the Minister of State’s opening contribution that she will be taking on board the enterprise committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny report and that is a positive thing. I agree with Deputy that we have a dedicated AI committee and it must have a role in making this the best possible legislation we can. There is the difficulty there between splitting the areas of authority and responsibility between those committees. Under any circumstances we would have needed extra time to be able to deal with this Bill in the way we needed to.
The independence of the AI office is critical to all of this and to everything that comes after it. I note that while the Minister of State said it is independent, there are things in the legislation that prompt me to question that independence, especially in relation to the ministerial powers. She has a lot to do to convince us of the independence of the office. I submitted amendment No. 16 because I believe the expertise and knowledge of the new members that will comprise the board must reflect the sections of society for which they will be regulating. That is why I have explicitly included the areas of AI, human rights, equality and law, trade unions and workers' rights, consumer protection and civil society engagement. Across the proposed seven members of the new board these are areas that should be represented. If those voices are not represented on the board I cannot see how there can be independence and expertise there in terms of the oversight and regulation we need.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-30