{"id":465557,"date":"2026-05-25T02:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/465557\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T02:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:00:28","slug":"ai-will-not-replace-accountants-chartered-accountants-ireland-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/465557\/","title":{"rendered":"AI will not replace accountants, Chartered Accountants Ireland says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence<\/a> will reinforce, rather than diminish, the role accountants play in the economy, an industry group says, challenging the narrative that accountants are at risk of being replaced by AI. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a common belief that AI will replace accountants, but the evidence simply doesn\u2019t support that,\u201d said Rosemary Keogh, chief executive of Chartered Accountants Ireland<\/a> (CAI) at the publication of a position paper on the future of AI and accountancy. \u201cIt reflects a misunderstanding of what modern accountants actually do.\u201d <\/p>\n

The paper emphasises that accountants need to take a leading role in implementing AI in finance functions, ensuring that systems are deployed responsibly, controls are robust and outputs can be trusted. <\/p>\n

Speaking at Wednesday\u2019s publication of the paper, Oireachtas Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence chairman, Malcolm Byrne cautioned that \u201caccountants who use AI will replace accountants who don\u2019t\u201d. <\/p>\n

Byrne described AI as \u201ca tool, rather than a goal in itself\u201d and said that \u201cmaintaining public trust is going to be critical\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, he accepts that it will see the nature of the profession evolving, with Byrne noting: \u201cWe are going to see job displacement in certain areas and opportunities in others.\u201d <\/p>\n

He cited a statistic from the World Economic Forum that, by 2030, there could be up to 90 million jobs displaced by AI, but up to 250 million created. <\/p>\n

Among several common myths about the impact AI is expected to have on the accountancy profession is the idea that entry-level roles in accountancy will disappear, the paper says.<\/p>\n

\u201cEntry-level jobs have been constantly evolving for many, many years,\u201d Keogh said. \u201cHistorically, graduates coming into accounting firms would have been doing a lot of what we would have called ticking and bashing. Accounting software has done much of that work for a really long time, so this isn\u2019t something that is completely new. <\/p>\n

\u201cAI will allow [entry-level auditors] to look at an entire data set for an organisation, see the trends and give them the opportunity to use their critical thinking and analytic skills. <\/p>\n

I think the role will change, but actually, I think the work at that junior level will become far more interesting in the future,\u201d Keogh said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think what will be really important as they move through university, third-level, and into the workplace, is that they learn how to use AI responsibly and effectively to do a better job.\u201d <\/p>\n

Keogh emphasised the responsibility of individual accountants regarding their use of AI. <\/p>\n

\u201cAccountants have a role to stand over any work that they produce and any work they\u2019re signing off on, so there is a huge personal and organisational responsibility about ensuring that anything that goes out into public domain has been sanity checked by a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence will reinforce, rather than diminish, the role accountants play in the economy, an industry group says,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,99078,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-465557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chartered-accountants-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465557","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=465557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}