{"id":416487,"date":"2026-04-25T06:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416487\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T06:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:34:07","slug":"ai-boom-threatens-to-cause-significant-upheaval-for-irish-tech-jobs-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416487\/","title":{"rendered":"AI boom threatens to cause \u2018significant upheaval\u2019 for Irish tech jobs \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government is bracing for possible turbulence in the Republic\u2019s tech sector as artificial intelligence <\/a>(AI) threatens to cause \u201csignificant upheaval\u201d to large parts of the Irish workforce in the coming years.<\/p>\n

In a forthright warning about the disruption the AI boom <\/a>may bring, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin said the State needs to be \u201cmindful\u201d that advances in the technology <\/a>could have far-reaching implications.<\/p>\n

It comes as Meta, owners of Facebook and Instagram, confirmed plans to cut 10 per cent of its global workforce, which equates to roughly 8,000 employees, to trim costs as it invests massively in AI<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It is unclear how many of Meta\u2019s 1,800 workers in the Dublin offices will be affected. <\/p>\n

Work is expected to pick up pace across several Government departments to assess the likelihood of AI <\/a>significantly shaking up the labour market within the next few years. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we should be mindful of the fact that there could be significant upheaval in the jobs market over the next decade. And it could be earlier, rather than the latter half of that decade,\u201d said Martin. <\/p>\n

Speaking on Friday, he added that officials had already been tasked with getting a better sense of how advances in AI <\/a>might affect jobs.<\/p>\n

Tech executives in leading AI companies <\/a>have often made bold predictions that the popular tools will continue to evolve rapidly, to the point where they will replace the need for substantial numbers of entry-level employees in white-collar industries.<\/p>\n

AI assistants, such as Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Microsoft Copilot and similar tools, have increasingly been incorporated into office workplaces. <\/p>\n

It is understood officials in the Department of Enterprise will, in the coming months, begin monitoring to review the uptake of the technology across businesses and how it is being deployed. <\/p>\n

The Department of Further and Higher Education has separately been tasked with helping people upskill in an attempt to AI-proof parts of the labour force. <\/p>\n

Martin said US industry figures involved in the AI race seemed to be putting a focus on using the tech to cut jobs. <\/p>\n

\u201cDepending on who you talk to, some people are very clear that the impacts will be very significant, others less so … We do need to get a handle on that as best we can,\u201d said Martin. <\/p>\n

The Republic was also well placed to gain jobs from more AI-driven investment in the State, he said. The Taoiseach was speaking in Cyprus where he was attending an EU summit. <\/p>\n

\u201cThree years ago, when ChatGPT was launched, we couldn\u2019t have imagined how powerful the tools we have today would be. So who knows where we will be in another three years\u2019 time,\u201d said Barry Scannell, a partner who specialises in AI in law firm William Fry. <\/p>\n

There was \u201cno doubt\u201d that more powerful AI tools would disrupt the workforce in the next number of years, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is what kind of disruption it will be … There will be job losses, but if we get it right, that will be mitigated if we upskill,\u201d said the lawyer. <\/p>\n

Scannell said a huge amount of coding work was now being done by AI <\/a>under the supervision of humans, but that software companies had increased their output as a result, rather than laying off large numbers of staff. <\/p>\n

A Department of Finance research paper, published in February, warned that the Republic\u2019s economy was particularly exposed to AI upending the world of work, given the large concentration of tech sector employees in the State. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government is bracing for possible turbulence in the Republic\u2019s tech sector as artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,895,61,60,1226,1843,80],"class_list":["post-416487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-fianna-fail","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-meta","tag-micheal-martin","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}