Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-06-30 ============================================================ James Geoghegan (FG), Dublin Bay South My amendments relate to section 9(1)(c), which sets out the function of the office to “promote and foster AI innovation and literacy” and tries to provide more clarity as to what that will look like and mean. Perhaps in her reply to the Minister of State might address the two subsequent provisions of the Act, namely, sections 10 and 11. One is about the Minister’s ability to give an order to the AI office and the other is about the ability of the Minister to give a direction to the AI office. As I understand the provision, the Minister would have to lay before the Houses any direction that he or she might give and in respect of those directions, none of those can relate to the actual regulatory enforcement function. It is going back to the promoting and fostering AI innovation and literacy point. My first question is what the difference is between a direction and an order and how those two elements will interplay. I also ask that as there is a statutory obligation in respect of directions, those directions would be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. I ask now, in contemplation of this secondary Bill the Minister of State is promoting, that she might consider an amendment to the personal data Bill she referred to in terms of the amendment of this Act, whereby the relevant committee, that is, the Oireachtas AI committee, would be the committee that would get to view and examine these directions or at least have some form of pre-legislative scrutiny function in respect of those directions. That is down to the knitting and the weeds of what we are doing in the AI committee. We are examining policies across every Department as they relate to AI. Quite clearly, any direction the Minister gives to this AI office will concern the implementation and adaptation of AI policy across a world of areas from education to health and enterprise. I acknowledge the logic of Deputy Murphy's point about the Central Bank at one point having a dual function of regulating and of promoting Ireland as a centre for financial services. After the financial crash that dual function was got rid of and the Central Bank solely had a role in respect of the regulating of financial services. However, while there is a logic to the argument, I view these issues as entirely separate. It boils down to two different philosophies present in this House and often in our committee in respect of AI. Ultimately, for Ireland to remain competitive we must examine how AI is being adapted and we must be ahead of others in how that AI adaptation is improving competitiveness. Separately, in an agile way we have to be extremely conscious of how AI is impacting young people in education at primary and secondary level and in further and higher education. We have to be agile in the impact AI is having on future jobs for graduates coming out of college, people trying to enter college and people who are not entering college at all, to know the types of jobs we are going to have in the future. We must be agile in order that we can mandate and direct policy to ensure that we can be responsive to the disruption that AI is causing and will cause and yet harness the benefits it is going to bring. I do not think there is a fair analogy between the two things, which are financial services and AI. AI has enormous risks and potential. It almost sounds cliched to keep repeating these phrases but as Members of the Oireachtas, we are being brought on a journey in our assessment of how AI is impacting society and the thematic approach we have adopted on the committee. The general public is using AI at some of the highest levels in Europe right now and yet they have equal levels of concern and mistrust. SMEs in Ireland at OECD level apparently are doing reasonably okay. We are a bit higher and yet there is still a low level of adaptation of AI. There are whole areas of our society and country where we need to bring people on a journey. There needs to be trust and it needs to be done in a coherent way. The AI office in my view is the appropriate body to do it. Where there is this statutory function where the Minister can direct through a direction or order and where there is a role for the Oireachtas in respect of these directions or order, it would be helpful to know, even at this early stage, what kinds of directions the Minister or Minister of State might be contemplating giving the AI office. It obviously has to comport with the goals of AI literacy. Are draft directions already being considered or made? There is also the separate point I am making that if the Minister is accountable to the Houses of the Oireachtas in respect of the directions, a formal statutory role be given to the AI committee and that this be contemplated in the context of any provisions that might be put forward in the personal data Bill the Minister of State referred to earlier. --- 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/2026-06-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-30