Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-06-30 ============================================================ Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth We are all aware of the huge dangers, which I will reiterate. The big one at the minute is the number of people who are worried – not from a technical point of view – about losing their job. If we are talking about an AI office, we must ensure there is significant capacity and that it engages with the State and all of its agencies from the point of view of fostering the skill sets that are required to ensure we can deliver AI solutions to improve workplaces and innovation within companies and everywhere else. A number of the amendments relate to this. We must make sure that we have an overall eye on the development of artificial intelligence and its dangers. We have seen issues with Grok, etc. We do not know where the new-found dangers will be. The fact is that we are talking about a huge amount of information and how it is taken from those who provide it, whether willingly and knowingly, and then how it is utilised. That is why it is absolutely vital that we have a framework that is ethical and responsible. I have not heard anyone speak against that. We hardly want it not to be ethical and to be irresponsible. We all recognise and have spoken about where there are obvious wins from the point of view of artificial intelligence for companies. As much as there are dangers within education, huge wins are obviously possible. It is about ensuring that the AI office has capacity for a framework to provide training, due diligence and instruction where necessary. It might not necessarily be through the AI office. The Acting Chair, Deputy McGreehan, and I spoke before about the use of the likes of Skillnet. We know that this has to be something that is delivered across all the local enterprise offices, LEOs, Enterprise Ireland and the IDA. It is about ensuring that the capacity, ambition and remit is there within the AI office and that we make sure that those within the AI office, as the previous set of amendments proposed, have the skill sets and capacity. In some respects we have had very little conversation. There has been talk about the need for the AI office to be up and running and the fact that primary legislation is needed, including to deal with issues that might not necessarily be addressed here and now, but I have heard little in relation to the AI strategy, how we develop that, and what sort of timeline we are talking about. I am going to return to the meeting with OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and Dell. I assume there were many others there. We definitely do not want a scenario and situation where we are being directed by them. I do not think people will give out about the fact that there is a conversation but I assume it is also about making sure there is transparency in relation to that and what we are proposing around the timeline for the AI strategy. I accept that no strategy that we put in play is going to remain static right through. I am interested in seeing that. I get that, to a degree, we are all talking in generalities because even when we talk specifically to amendments I am fairly sure that we are not going to see any amendments accepted. Could we have some indication of the trajectory of what is being sought by the amendments as regards an ethical and responsible framework, ensuring that the capacity is there within the AI office, that there is a sufficient amount of independence and that we can deliver a strategy that works? We all know the necessity of a feedback loop and the constant change that will occur. While there may be engagement with the likes of the companies the Minister of State met, we must not be directed by them. That piece is vital. --- 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