Why Ireland needs to seize its AI opportunities

Legal experts Karyn Harty and Garrett Hayes explain why they think Ireland is well placed to capitalise on the AI boom.

The potential for artificial intelligence (AI) development and adoption in Ireland is enormous, however the country needs to decide whether it wants to be a leader or a follower in the technology.

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 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 future economy.

Ireland certainly hopes to harness AI’s potential. In November 2024, it 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 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, 59pc of large Irish businesses said they were worried about keeping pace with technological changes in AI and just 34pc 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 open-minded 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 regulation around AI, 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 medtech 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 a recent State of Start-ups Survey released by Scale Ireland, there are more than 2,200 indigenous tech start-up and scale-up companies, employing more than 52,000 people, in Ireland.

Enthusiasm for Ireland’s AI start-up ecosystem was also evidenced by the outrage at the Government’s recent decision to shutter the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) – the country’s national start-up accelerator – in November 2025, with critics of the decision citing this as a blow to Ireland’s AI future.

Risk v opportunity

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.

59pc of Irish businesses surveyed said they thought organisations that fail to embrace AI-driven change will become increasingly unviable, while 63pc said AI is now a key mechanism for protecting revenue and the bottom line in their organisation.

This suggests that doing nothing is regarded as more hazardous for Irish businesses than engaging with the risks in a measured way.

While leaps of faith are necessary to some extent with any new technology, preparation is essential and it is possible to put robust, governance safety nets in place before taking such leaps.

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, 60pc 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 general counsel and 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.

By Karyn Harty and Garrett Hayes

Karyn Harty is global co-chair of disputes and is a partner and head of the litigation practice group in Dentons’ Dublin office; Garrett Hayes is a corporate partner in Dentons’ Dublin office.

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