2026-06-16

150. Deputy Aindrias Moynihan asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to provide an update on assessments being carried out by his Department on the impact of AI on graduate-level and entry-level employment with emerging data of reduced hiring in certain sectors; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45645/26]

AI is not simply about technological change. It is about whether Ireland continues to offer a fair and functioning pathway from education to employment or whether AI will risk closing the door on the next generation before it even gets a chance to start. Will the Minister outline what his Department's latest assessments show about AI impacts on employment, in particular on graduate and entry-level jobs?

I thank Deputy Moynihan for his question. My Department is continually monitoring the labour market and the impact of artificial intelligence. We have a number of relevant pieces of research I can cite, including research from the expert group on future skills needs published last year, How AI is transforming the Irish Labour Market. This work highlights the speed at which Ireland is moving in relation to AI, noting the strong demand for AI jobs but also the robust supply pipeline in relation to AI. Ireland has a track record of producing very skilled workers and this is also happening with AI, as work in my Department has shown. Ireland has seen a doubling in AI jobs and usage since 2023. While this is a fast-changing field, it shows the inherent dynamism and resilience of the Irish labour market. This work is currently being updated, which is important given the fluid situation that exists. Furthermore, work published in conjunction with the Department of Finance highlights that the labour market here is highly exposed to AI, given the composition of employment, specifically in relation to ICT, financial and professional services. The work also noted that AI may already be affecting employment patterns, with sectors more exposed to AI, such as ICT and financial services, recording significantly weaker employment growth in recent years. In terms of graduate or entry-level jobs, we are monitoring developments closely and working closely with the Department of Finance. Its latest annual progress report from April 2026 is informative in this regard. It notes that employment growth among 15- to 29-year-olds in sectors at risk to AI declined by 2.5% between 2023 and 2025, despite overall employment increasing. This was particularly pronounced in the ICT sector. More broadly in respect of the labour market, activity levels remain strong, despite a difficult international environment. The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show that employment growth was effectively flat in quarter 1 of 2026. However, the overall employment levels remains exceptionally high at 2.8 million people.

The data suggests it is not a collapse in opportunities, but more a fundamental restructuring of how graduates enter the workforce. Research indicates that almost half of employers are reducing their entry-level roles, directly linked to AI adoption, and 83% of recruiters say that hiring is now more selective and strategic. While almost 40% of employers increased recruitment earlier this year, that growth was concentrated in specialist roles. Even in sectors like IT and telecommunications, where 56% of employers are increasing hiring, those roles are increasingly focused on experienced and highly specialised candidates and over a quarter of firms are recruiting specifically in AI and machine learning. The challenge is clear. The opportunities are not disappearing but the channel into them is narrowing. Will the Minister set out what targeted interventions are being developed to ensure graduates and entry-level workers are not choked out of the labour market as that transition accelerates?

We are working very closely with all our skills partners and enterprise agencies to ensure training is being delivered in the key sectors that are at risk, namely, graduates, as well as particular cohorts of the employment market like ICT, professional services and legal and financial services. We have a huge amount of skills upgrading to do in those areas. Take the IDA for example. We set out an ambition to train 40,000 people over the four-year strategy and in year one we have hit 33,000. That demonstrates the capacity and training we are doing. There is also a huge amount of opportunity. It is not a period of decline for the labour market but a period of transition in which old functions will change and new opportunities will emerge. Take, for example, our high-performance growth unit in Enterprise Ireland. Of 196 new businesses this year, half of them are grounded in AI. That shows the opportunity there. We are working with the expert group on future skills. Our new national skills observatory, which will be profiling and matching the skills and work our skills partners will be doing, has been established. We will have our AI office up and running from 1 August and it will be building capacity and ensuring our citizens are fully trained to grasp the opportunities that are presented.

Ireland has strong growth in AI and high demand for skills but those entry-level roles are reducing and graduates are going to struggle to gain the experience required in that growth and to be ready to take part in that growth. A whole cohort of new graduates finished their exams a few weeks ago and are waiting on results and preparing to enter the labour market. Ireland's economy, as the Minister says, is especially exposed to AI with about 63% of employment estimated to be affected to some degree or another. That reflects our concentration in knowledge-intensive sectors. It makes Ireland both a leader in AI adoption but also very exposed to labour market disruption. Employers are increasingly optimising for productivity and they are doing that by hiring experienced workers. That is going to threaten the pipeline of future talent. What targeted interventions are being considered to sustain graduates with clear pathways? These could be internships or incentives for entry-level hiring. Crucially, how is the Government going to ensure Ireland's AI success does not come at the expense of opportunities for younger people?

We have updated our digital and AI strategy, which has 80 deliverables, while working right across our skill partners to ensure our citizens are getting that transformational training that makes those jobs sticky. We also have done a huge amount of work on establishing our national skills observatory with the Minister, Deputy Lawless, and his Department of further and higher education to profile those skills and to ensure we are having the output from our tertiary education partners that really reflects a changing labour force. It is going to be a big challenge for someone who started a course in third level two or three years ago as the labour market has changed significantly, particularly at entry level. We have a huge amount of training and skills profiling in relation to that. I mentioned what our colleagues in the IDA are doing in making a database of 300,000 employees and making those jobs more sticky and targeting them before they come under pressure. The key thing we are trying to do is predict the cohorts that are under pressure and get that training in, get in with our employers and offer them the training so employees can benefit from it and ultimately secure the jobs rather than leaving them exposed to artificial intelligence.