For good or ill, it is undeniable that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is changing many Irish workplaces. It is rapidly transforming how workers go about their daily routines and has inspired much debate about whether it will eliminate jobs – or enhance the productivity of existing roles.
We asked several winners of the Irish Times Business Person of the Month awards for their views on how Irish businesses are currently deploying AI and where it is all headed.
Marian Finnegan, chief executive, Sherry Fitzgerald Group
How is your business currently using AI?
AI is becoming an increasingly useful tool across our business. We’re using it to help colleagues with tasks such as research, reporting, document preparation and meeting summaries, while also enhancing some of our customer-facing systems.
For example, a negotiator can now pull together property details, viewing history and customer information in minutes before meeting a client. That means less time spent on administration and more time focused on advice and customer service. Ultimately, AI is helping our people spend more time where they add the greatest value.
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What benefits has it brought to Sherry Fitzgerald?
The biggest benefit has been productivity.
AI is helping us complete routine tasks more efficiently, giving our colleagues more time to focus on clients, decision making and relationship building.
It’s also helping us improve responsiveness, make better use of information and streamline everyday processes. For customers, that translates into a smoother and more responsive experience.
How much have you spent to date on AI and do you think this will grow in the future?
We’ve been investing in AI as part of our broader commitment to technology and innovation.
Rather than treating it as a stand-alone initiative, we’re embedding AI into the systems and processes that help us operate more effectively and serve clients better.
We’ll continue to invest where we see clear benefits for our customers, our colleagues and the long-term success of the business.
What impact is it likely to have on staff numbers?
I believe AI will change how people work far more than it will change the need for people. Property is ultimately a people business built on trust, expertise and relationships. Clients want professional guidance when making some of the most important decisions in their lives.
AI can help by reducing administration, improving access to information and streamlining processes, giving our colleagues more time to focus on clients and deliver the advice and service that technology alone cannot provide.
The future isn’t AI or people. It’s AI helping people do their jobs better.
Karen Clince, chief executive, Tigers Childcare
How is your business currently using AI?
We are still relatively early in our use of AI, but it is already being used in practical ways across areas including finance, HR, management reporting, document review and workflow management.
Our finance team, for example, uses AI to help update file notes with new financial information and to extract relevant information from lengthy documents, such as identifying a particular rent review clause within a commercial lease. We also use it to distribute tasks and streamline how information is collected and processed.
We are also using AI in HR. It can help review CVs and identify candidates who meet the relevant criteria and have the key attributes, reducing the amount of manual screening involved.
What benefits has it brought to the business of childcare?
The most immediate benefit has been time and efficiency.
A task that previously involved several rounds of drafting, research and review can now sometimes be brought to a much more developed stage in one sitting.
If I am preparing a document on government policy, for example, I may previously have had to sift through a number of policy documents myself to pull out the relevant information and data.
But now, I use AI to help identify and summarise that material. I can also provide several existing documents and ask it to bring the relevant elements together into a new document focused on a particular issue.
That is particularly valuable in childcare because the administrative burden associated with government funding schemes, regulation and reporting has increased significantly.
I’d much rather have our people spending their time on work that adds value to children, families and colleagues than on repetitive administration.
For me, that is the real benefit. It isn’t simply about doing the same work faster. It is about creating more time for the parts of people’s jobs where human interaction, experience and judgment really matter.
How much has Tigers spent to date on AI, and what does it plan to spend in the future?
Our direct expenditure on AI and automation to date has been relatively small.
Some of the technology we use, such as Microsoft Power Automate, is already included within our Microsoft 365 package. Other services, including Jotform and individual AI tools, involve relatively modest subscription costs. So, at this stage, AI hasn’t required significant stand-alone investment.
I expect that to change over time as we move from using AI primarily as an individual productivity tool towards integrating it more closely into operational and management systems.
Will it have any impact on your staff numbers?
I don’t see AI replacing our childcare professionals.
Childcare is fundamentally a human profession. The relationships between practitioners, children and families – the care, empathy, intuition and professional judgment involved – cannot simply be replicated by technology.
Where I think AI could have a very significant impact is in supporting those professionals and taking administration away from them.
The important distinction for me is that AI should flag and support rather than diagnose or decide.
Ultimately, I think the opportunity for AI in childcare is to give our people more time to be human.
Niall Browne, chief executive, Dawn Meats
How has Dawn Meats made use of AI tools to date?
We are using it in targeted ways to upskill our people and help our teams make better use of data across multiple areas including production planning, operational efficiency, forecasting, quality systems, sustainability reporting, customer insight and day-to-day administration.
Where have you seen the biggest benefits?
In a business of our scale, operating across agriculture, primary processing, further processing and worldwide customer markets, the ability to analyse information quicker and identify patterns or opportunities is increasingly valuable.
The benefits are already evident in faster analysis, improved visibility of performance, more streamlined processes and better support for decision-making across the business.
Our Activate and Activate UK programmes show how the use of AI tools is making a tangible difference at farm level to the benefit of all.
Will the use of AI have any implications for the size of the Dawn workforce?
AI is not a substitute for the experience and judgment of our people, whether on farms, in our sites, with customers or across our support functions. It is about giving teams better tools, optimising workflows, prioritising tasks and freeing up time for higher-value work.
Are you planning to boost your spending on AI?
We have taken a measured approach to investment to date, focusing on pilots, systems and capability building where there is a clear operational, commercial or sustainability benefit. We expect investment to increase over the coming years as the technology matures, but it will remain grounded in practical application, strong governance, data security and responsible human oversight.
Hugh McGuire, chief executive, Glanbia
How has Glanbia been using AI?
We have made strong progress with the implementation of our new IT operating model, providing the foundation for greater automation, AI-enabled support and enhanced service delivery across Glanbia.
Alongside this, we are deploying a focused set of AI solutions that support decision-making, accelerate innovation and improve productivity across areas including R&D, business planning, finance, procurement and the consumer and customer journey.
How is Glanbia’s use of AI likely to grow?
We continue to expand our use of AI where we see clear business value, supported by appropriate governance and oversight.
What specifically would this mean?
The AI and digital transformation is creating significant efficiencies across Glanbia’s finance function by automating routine processes, improving data quality, accelerating reporting cycles, and enabling more predictive decision-making.
We are also deploying AI within R&D and innovation.
Drawing on years of formulation data across our premix and flavours businesses, we are developing an AI solution that enables our scientists to quickly identify previously developed formulations that could meet new customer requirements, helping to accelerate innovation and responsiveness.
Pulse, a conversational and advisory AI tool that analyses consumer search data, helps us better understand emerging consumer needs and trends across protein and performance nutrition – as well as respond to agentic search and commerce trends.
Michael Lohan, chief executive, IDA Ireland
How do you see IDA Ireland clients currently using AI?
IDA Ireland’s role here is multifaceted. We facilitate, incentivise, and support the world’s leading companies to locate strategic business activities in Ireland. When it comes to AI, that focus is on ensuring that we have the strongest companies from each of the essential components of AI – from the cloud infrastructure companies, to the companies that develop and manufacture the chips, the companies that build the frontier models, and then, lastly, those that develop the applications.
IDA Ireland’s clients are adopting AI at an increasingly faster pace, in line with their global organisations, to improve productivity in their Irish operations. Thankfully, the country is really well placed to provide that support. Ireland is ranked among the top nations in Europe for the availability of AI skills, and in reality it is those countries that have a workforce with the ability to adopt and use AI that will achieve the most from the technology’s benefits in the shortest time. At IDA Ireland, we are seeing increased adoption of our digital transformation and training/upskilling supports, to both help companies deploy the latest technology, in either a manufacturing or services environment, and also to ensure that their teams here are enabled to use and take advantage of AI.
We’re also seeing some of our clients use IDA Ireland supports to build technology solutions that are then deployed as part of their global technology products or services.
A great example of this is Workday’s recent announcement of a €175 million investment in an AI centre of excellence. This will help to ensure regional AI, cybersecurity, engineering and research expertise is reflected in Workday’s global AI platform. Aligned to this, Workday partnered with Technology Ireland Digital Skillnet to upskill 300 current employees through its AI Business Academy. And, through its partnership with TU Dublin, over 285 employees have already graduated with certifications in AI-relevant themes including machine learning, cybersecurity, entrepreneurial leadership, leadership and team enablement, and creating successful products. This demonstrates how a globally leading multinational, through its partnership with IDA Ireland, plays a leading role in building an ecosystem that will have benefits for years to come, delivering measurable business value.
What benefits does AI bring to businesses?
In an environment where companies are seeking to gain competitive advantage, whether that’s through more efficient processes or shortened manufacturing cycles, we’re seeing AI bringing value. In a manufacturing setting, systems are being further automated with the help of AI. For example, AI vision systems shorten inspection times in complex manufacturing processes, helping to reduce errors, and freeing up resources to do more complex and value-added tasks.
We have also seen companies deploy advanced analytics in manufacturing, to provide plant leaders with greater knowledge of factory performance. Digital twins help manufacturing leaders to design and deploy new equipment in the most efficient manner possible, while adding capability in predictive maintenance, helping to reduce plant downtime. In a services environment, AI democratises the access to information, helps to reduce labour-intensive and time-consuming data gathering and analysis, while also speeding up decision making. IDA Ireland clients are deploying AI across all of these settings.
How does IDA Ireland use AI in its work – and what plans does it have for its use in the future?
IDA Ireland is well advanced in implementing its own digital transformation programme. This starts with ensuring that our data is of a high quality and is secure and then deploying tools that help the organisation interrogate and understand that data to improve business outcomes. A number of digital solutions continue to be implemented by the organisation, while access to Microsoft Copilot has been deployed to all staff. We see AI applications as helping us to get greater value from our data and, in turn, to provide a better service to our client base.
What impact will AI have on the Irish workforce over the coming years?
It is probably too early to say what the impact will be, but it’s safe to say there will be considerable change and transformation within the workforce. If implemented at the right time and in the right settings, AI has the potential to level the global competitive playing pitch. Our greatest asset as a country is our workforce. IDA Ireland’s focus is on the training and upskilling of staff across its client base, with huge demand for our training supports, to ensure that we continue to be one of the world’s leading FDI locations.
