Artificial intelligence shows significant potential across a wide area of business, but Ireland is grappling with its implementation, write Karyn Harty and Garrett Hayes of Dentons

Since Brexit took effect in 2020, Ireland has had the advantage of being the last English-speaking common law jurisdiction in the EU, affording it the benefit of being party to the development of world-leading regulation on artificial intelligence (AI) and technology more broadly, while retaining its reputation as an attractive place for the world to do business.

A healthy budget surplus in 2024 also means Ireland has the opportunity to invest in making AI a meaningful component of the country’s economy.

Ireland certainly hopes to harness AI’s potential. Last November, the Department of Enterprise launched a “refreshed” national AI strategy, building on its 2021 strategy to take account of significant developments in AI, including regulatory updates such as the introduction of the EU’s AI Act in August 2024, as well as the advent of generative AI tools.

This statement of intent to drive in AI deployment at a central state level has been an encouraging message to Ireland’s private sector, where there is significant scope for AI adoption.

Yet despite this positive and progressive environment for AI to flourish, Ireland, like many jurisdictions, is grappling with the practicalities of implementation.

According to a recent survey by Dentons, 59% of large Irish businesses said they were worried about keeping pace with technological changes in AI and just 34% said they had a formal AI roadmap in place.

These statistics lend themselves to a number of interpretations, the most obvious of which is that large Irish organisations are taking an openminded but fundamentally reactive approach to AI.

This approach is perhaps unsurprising. While there will be significant variation in levels of technological sophistication across Irish businesses, the risk of changing regulations, the headache of change management, ethical concerns about some AI use cases and workforce redundancy issues are significant hurdles businesses are reluctant to tackle sooner than they need to.

For executives sitting on the boards of Irish businesses, their risk matrix is constantly expanding, with AI featuring as one of the newest and potentially most disruptive entrants on the grid.

For this reason, when it comes to choosing which AI tools to adopt, the size and track record of product developers, along with their capacity to absorb liability if and when things do go wrong, will be an important factor in procurement.

While this favours the largest, longest-established multinational tech companies, it does not preclude Ireland’s thriving AI start-up scene.

Many small Irish AI companies offer highly targeted solutions — from med-tech to advertising — that are designed to bolt onto existing corporate operations to deliver substantial improvements, such as data transparency and process efficiency, in specific areas.

And while partnering with an AI start-up is unquestionably riskier than procuring a solution from a large, established player, the competitive advantages of trialling solutions that have yet to hit the mass market may be considerable.

According to the most recent State of Start-ups Survey released by Scale Ireland, an independent not-for-profit organisation that researches and promotes Ireland’s technology industry, there are more than 2,200 indigenous tech start-up and scale-up companies in Ireland, employing over 52,000 people.

Despite the perceived risks associated with AI, the majority opinion expressed in Dentons’ survey was that, overall, the technology represents a major opportunity for Irish businesses.

About six in ten Irish businesses surveyed said they thought organisations that fail to embrace AI-driven change will become increasingly unviable, while 63% said AI is now a key mechanism for protecting revenue and the bottom line in their organisation.

Irish companies that start adopting AI should do so methodically in an auditable way by matching AI solutions to the needs of their business, so that they know where the AI sits in their organisation and can react quickly if and when regulations change.

Dentons’ survey also underscored the importance of considering relevant legal issues early in the AI adoption process.

According to the survey findings, 60% of Irish businesses already involve their legal teams in the compliance stage of developing their AI strategy.

The same proportion of Irish businesses said they thought their legal teams were crucial in ensuring businesses have sophisticated data management strategies in place.

These numbers are encouraging but indicate there is room for better understanding of the legal risks associated with AI and the governance measures necessary to allow businesses to wear those risks with confidence.