Ms Sharon Casey:

The Irish Senior Citizens Parliament offers a strong, unified voice representing the needs and rights of older people at local, national and European levels. Our aim is to influence policy and decisions that affect the lives of older people. We seek to enable and encourage older people to self-advocate and to build capacity and confidence to speak for themselves on all issues. Our vision is an Ireland where older people are valued as equal citizens, can enjoy the full protection of their human rights and are encouraged and facilitated to be full and active participants in society.

The ISCP has, at the core of its work, the issue of equality and rights for older people. We work to ensure the implementation of policy commitments pertinent to ageing and older people. A fundamental element of this relates to ensuring our members, and older people generally, have their voices and experiences taken into account in public policy. The ISCP thanks the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion on AI and older people.

We met with a cohort of our member base to listen to their views on this emerging and fast-changing issue and the following content is the result of this discussion, together with results from our annual pre-budget surveys. A number of high-profile audio, image and video deepfakes are in the public domain, including former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, actor Brendan Gleeson, Professor Luke O’Neill and news anchors on RTÉ and Virgin Media. Our members, and the Irish public in general, currently have high levels of trust in State institutions.

The sophistication and accuracy of deepfakes is concerning. The committee members, as politicians, must also be concerned about being misrepresented and fakes being viewed and listened to by large numbers of the public. Having the content removed is not sufficient remedy as trust is eroded.

We noted the use of the term "open AI" during the opening session of the committee on 10 June 2025. Many technological advances are available for free at the outset. However, when they achieve a high market saturation, the service is monetised. The often repeated phrase is, "If you are not paying, you are the product."

Facebook and WhatsApp remain popular with many of our members. They have not migrated to other platforms in the same way as other age cohorts. Facebook introduced subscription charges to continue use without ads. Managing preferences for personal data is intricate and convoluted. It has not received the memo about plain English. WhatsApp introduced Meta AI in 2025. Users were not offered a choice to opt out. WhatsApp groups are in common use among our membership, being relatively easy to use.

Many of us who have access to Microsoft offerings for free through our employment forget that subscription charges apply for basic use of common items such as Word and Excel. Those are the very tools with which older people who are retired are familiar.

The cost of either purchasing or upgrading devices is another challenge. This is a particular challenge to our members and blocks access to those who either cannot afford to upgrade devices or whose technical skills or cognitive abilities struggle with change.

Accessing mygov.ieand banking apps was used as an educational tool in digital skills classes in recent years. However, they can no longer be used. Additional security steps have been introduced that require the use of up-to-date smartphones. This leads people back into calling in person to offices, where they still exist, or using telephone services with elements of AI embedded in them and dealing with the resultant struggles.

The cost of connecting to devices is prohibitive. Those of our members who qualify for the living alone allowance and fuel allowance receive €2.50 per week in telephone support allowance, which is way below the cost of Wi-Fi.

In recent weeks, I have attended information sessions on digital literacy training by NALA and Solas, which are welcome initiatives. The cost to upgrade or obtain devices to avail of training is not affordable to those on fixed incomes. Much of the narrative about AI literacy training relates to education and workplace settings. Those who have retired from the workforce risk being left behind.

There are concerns in respect of AI being put forward as a solution to loneliness and having someone to chat to. The experience of isolation from other humans during Covid-19 restrictions was life-altering for many of our members. Some have not achieved their pre-Covid levels of interaction. It has reduced their quality of life.

Our members are open to exploring how AI might prompt them to action if their cognitive ability becomes impaired, for example, to remind them of important tasks. However, the idea of AI replacing human interaction is abhorrent to many and they do not think they are the only sector of Irish society that thinks like that.