Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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The second part of our meeting is the final meeting of our module on AI, justice and law enforcement. We are very pleased to be joined by representatives from the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. I welcome Ms Louise Jevens, chief information office, Mr. Ben Ryan, assistant secretary with responsibility for criminal legislation, and Mr. Frank McNamara, senior legal researcher. I invite the witnesses to make their statements.

Ms Louise Jevens:

I and my colleagues thank the Cathaoirleach for the opportunity to appear before the committee today on behalf of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. We welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee on the topic of artificial intelligence in the justice and law enforcement context.

The Department’s use of AI is being taken forward as part of a broader, structured programme of digital modernisation, set out in our upcoming strategy for the period ahead. That strategy will focus on transforming services through digitalisation, improving public services through innovation, making better use of data, and ensuring our people have the tools and skills they need to deliver effectively.

Within that context, AI is viewed as an enabling technology rather than an objective in itself. Our ambition is to use AI responsibly to improve service quality, reduce administrative burden and support evidence-based work while maintaining public trust in our sensitive policy and operational domain.

At present, the Department’s use of AI is limited to a low-risk, supportive application. This is AI-enabled functionality within our customer service portal. It is designed to help manage queries more efficiently and support both our applicants and our staff in their work. This tool does not make decisions and operates in alignment with established data protection, cybersecurity and governance requirements in place.

Looking ahead, the Department’s approach is intentionally measured. We are seeking to move towards a joined-up and sustainable use of AI, where it delivers clear value and is supported by appropriate governance and controls. This aims to be ambitious enough to deliver benefits but remain grounded in realism about risk, capability and trust.

To support this, the Department is strengthening its digital and data governance, ensuring alignment with departmental priorities, compliance with legal and regulatory requirements and appropriate management of risk, including ethical considerations. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act and the guidelines for the responsible use of AI in the public service form part of the wider environment in which we operate. They reinforce the importance of risk-based decision-making, human accountability and transparency – the principles that are already reflected in how the Department approaches technology investment and service design.

Mr. Ben Ryan:

I also thank the Cathaoirleach for the opportunity to appear before the committee today on behalf of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration.

The key regulatory framework for the use of AI systems across the European Union is the AI Act, which was negotiated by colleagues in the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. The AI Act framework will apply to different sectors and the aspect of relevance to my area is the use of AI systems for law enforcement purposes. One of the requirements of the AI Act, set out in Article 6(5), is that the European Commission is required, after consulting the European Artificial Intelligence Board, to provide guidelines specifying the practical implementation of the use of high-risk AI systems. While the guidelines will act as an interpretative tool in understanding how to implement the AI Act, the European Court of Justice will be the ultimate arbitrator of the AI Act and its provisions.

The Garda Síochána Recording Devices (Amendment) Bill provides for certain concepts which will fall within the scope of the EU AI Act. This Bill, currently before the Dáil, is providing for what is called biometric analysis, which is the automated processing of biometric data in images or video footage. Its use would mean that An Garda Síochána could sort, filter, compare, recognise or cluster, as it is called, relevant images from a collection of images or footage.

It does not seek to identify a person. Rather, it seeks to find instances of that person across relevant images or footage where it is necessary and proportionate to utilise. An example of where biometric analysis will be particularly useful is understanding the whereabouts, movements and actions of certain individuals during the Dublin riots of November 2023. It is also a very important tool in assessing large amounts of data on seized devices which contain child sexual abuse material.

I cannot speak to the operational aspects of the use of biometric analysis, only to the legislative framework we were putting in place around them. The power to utilise biometric analysis comes with safeguards such as the requirement to conduct human rights and data protection impact assessments and a requirement for a code of practice. The code will require approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas.

We appreciate the committee's role in examining these issues. We welcome any questions and discussions.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses. We move to questions from members.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for attending this morning. Ms Jevens in her opening statement stated it was end-to-end autonomous workflows. Will she explain what that means and what the goal is?

Ms Louise Jevens:

Our goal to provide service delivery across from customer engagement with us until delivery of the service, making it easier for them to interact with us. Previously, we were in the middle of a programme of modernisation in the Department, digitisation and modernisation. Prior to that, there was a lot of paper in the process. All of our immigration schemes required people to submit huge volumes of paper in support of applications. We have taken a lot of that out of the process and service design. That is where we are automating our services. We do not use AI in that particular piece. That is just a regular process, service design and technology build.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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How does Ms Jevens see AI improving public services, especially in the Department of justice? What is happening at present to make sure that people have the skills and training they need to deliver a safe and citizen-based AI public service?

Ms Louise Jevens:

As I stated earlier, we have delivered some AI in our digital content centre, which is our customer service portal. We have two pieces of AI in that. One of them is a smart chatbot which we provide for our applicants. It provides applicant support and access to publicly available information on our schemes and services so that they can use the chatbot to find out information. Internally, we also support our own staff with a smart AI assistant. That assists in processing. If somebody raises a query with the Department, it can pull all the queries together into one coherent piece. That means our customer service agents are responding with the latest information and are able to deal with queries more effectively. We were also using a third party service to identify. When our users interact, now they do so within an authenticated account. In creating that authenticated account we use some AI technology to identify that the person applying is actually the person providing the documentation in support of that application. It means that we are able to confidently and securely know that who we are interacting with as an applicant is who they say they are. Then we can deal with their queries.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Ryan spoke about operational aspects of biometric analysis. What are the main concerns regarding citizens' privacy, for instance, when using this method for data misuse or false match errors?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

What is envisaged here in terms of the impact on citizens is that this Bill that is currently before the Houses does not deal with identification of individuals. It is not matching against anything, creating a database or any sort of dataset. At the moment we are trying to equip the Garda to be able to follow clusters of images, including people, through the use of technology. I referenced in the opening remarks the Dublin riots for example. What the Garda had to do after that was manually plough through over 20,000 hours of CCTV footage to try to track the movements of individual people who had been involved in criminal behaviour during the course of the riot.

What we are intending to do through the use of biometric analysis is to enable the Garda to utilise tools to be able to track people who move across different sets of footage and to do so all the way across and identify the start and end points of what they were involved in without having to pull gardaí away from the front line and have them ploughing through hours of CCTV footage. The impact on human rights and privacy in that instance is a lot less than, say, the impact of matching them against the database. We do have proposals for a subsequent Bill and there is a programme-for-Government commitment on biometric identification. That is not contained in the current one. That will be in a subsequent Bill.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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What is Mr. Ryan's opinion on the legal aspect of biometric systems, particularly using AI as a mass-surveillance system, for example, using face recognition across city networks?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

There is no proposal to use it in that fashion. There is a whole range of-----

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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However, it can be used. It is used in other countries.

Mr. Ben Ryan:

The safeguards we are putting in place include data protection impact assessments. They also include human rights impact assessments required for a code of practice. The code of practice will have to be agreed by both Houses, as I said, so it would not be possible to utilise such systems in that fashion. We have no intention of utilising them in that fashion and it would not be possible unless it complied with human rights and data protection impact assessments, which I would be doubtful it would, or that both Houses of the Oireachtas would approve a proposal that would be along those lines.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses. I will start with Mr. Ryan. I do not know if he saw or heard Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis before this committee when she was speaking about how there had been 244 referrals through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children - she did identify Grok - and that about 50% of those referrals related to child abuse imagery as defined in the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act. We teased this out with her and she was confident that, as it related to child sex abuse imagery, they had the legislative framework to carry out investigations and that, ultimately, it would be for the DPP to prosecute, but that there was a complexity attached to non-consensual adult intimate imagery as it relates to these platforms generating that type of imagery and that that might necessitate legislative change at some point in the future arising from those investigations. Is there anything Mr. Ryan can say to us about that in terms of the examination of the existing legislative framework, Coco's Law, in that area and how AI systems may impact future changes to that law?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

Regarding the distribution of such images in relation to adults, it is already prohibited and already a criminal offence. I suppose what was being referenced is the creation itself. The creation of images of that nature as regards children is criminalised but there is not an explicit criminalisation of the creation of such images as regards adults. The approach that was taken was that we considered whether we needed to do something domestically. We considered that and it is still a possibility, but it was felt that a more effective approach would be to take this up at EU level. We have seen developments recently where the European Commission has indicated that, in the interpretation of the EU Act guidelines, it is intending to criminalise and prohibit the creation of-----

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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That is the important distinction; civil prohibition as distinct from criminal legislation. There will not be a criminalisation, as I understand it at least. Is it intended that legislation in Ireland arising from the changes at EU level would result in a criminal legislative change to Coco's Law?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

We do not know at this stage what kind of instruments the Commission is going to bring forward. Often, it has twin instruments, a regulation and a directive, and one will contain criminal sanctions. We have seen that in a number of areas.

That may be what the Commission ultimately does here. We will transpose both instruments in Ireland and the criminal sanctions element will result in general sanctions in the domestic Statute Book as well.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I am not trying to trip Mr. Ryan up but I am surprised that he is conflating the two. As I understand it, the change to the AI Act involves adding a prohibitory practice whereby an AI platform would be prohibited in the context of the regulatory framework in which the AI Act lies, which is Coimisiún na Meán. It is not An Garda Síochána, the DPP and ending up in court, which is what Coco's Law or the child sex abuse imagery pornography Act relates to. Mr. Ryan said that there was some discussion that, at a domestic level, we might take decisions. Is he now saying that this is not something the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration is considering because of the changes that are taking place in what I would consider much more of a civil context than a criminal context?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

It is not that we are not considering it. It is still something we are examining but we want to see what comes out of what the Commission is proposing. I take the point that in the context of Coimisiún na Meán, it is more of a regulatory space, but often the Commission will bring forward accompanying sanctions - criminal sanctions - where people breach regulatory actions so there can be a package of measures that the Commission will have that can contain both civil, administrative and criminal sanctions for breaches.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Mythen spoke about the Bill that is going through. I think it is going to be passed in the Dáil tomorrow. It concerns the biometric piece. An Garda Síochána has carried out a public consultation into its existing CCTV code of conduct, which it has to do under the Act. It is then up to An Garda Síochána to present a new code for CCTV. From looking at it, it seems pretty clear that, similarly, its code must be compliant with all of the human rights assessments to which Mr. Ryan is referring, such as data protection assessments, and that it would not be its intention that any roll-out of additional CCTV would use live biometric data as part of Garda-operated CCTV. Does Mr. Ryan know where that code of conduct is currently because, ultimately, that needs to be approved by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration? Is that something where the Department gets involved in back and forth? Where is that currently sitting?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

Under the existing Act, which is from 2023, there are a number of different codes of conduct regarding different provisions. CCTV is one provision while there are also provisions concerning aerial devices like drones along with automatic number plate recognition, ANPR. They are at different stages of consultation. The consultation on a number of them has been completed. Mr. McNamara might be able to provide the details concerning where we are with regard to the one involving CCTV.

Mr. Frank McNamara:

For CCTV, the code will not commence until after enactment of the recording devices Bill 2025. The Bill has to go through before that consultation will be completed and everything will be in place for the code.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I think the consultation was completed on 25 February but Mr. McNamara probably means that the preparation of the draft of the code will not be completed until this Bill is enacted. Is that what he is saying?

Mr. Frank McNamara:

Exactly.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I might pick up on that point. It is related to the ANPR issue and concerns illegal dumping. There has been a long-running challenge to local authorities being able to use ANPR, CCTV, drone technology and so on because of data protection concerns. Part of the difficulty was that we thought we had enacted the legislation and then it took ages for the code to be put in place and we still see delays in that space. We see AI as an enabling tool to enable us to catch those involved in criminal activity or activity that is harmful to the State. Can can we not do this more quickly? Yes, it about having the safeguards in place but we should be using AI and all of these tools to address these very legitimate concerns on the part of society.

Mr. Ben Ryan:

That has been delayed because we have had to make changes in this Bill to allow applications for CCTV that were already in train.

Under one system, we needed to make sure there was a transitional provision so that people, communities and local authorities did not have to start from scratch again and commence the whole process. We have added interim transitional provisions in this Bill that will allow people not to have to go back to the start of the process. Even though it is taking time to get the Bill across the line, it is intended as a time-saving measure because without that, everyone who had an application somewhere in the system for CCTV would have had to go back to the start. That is the intention on that.

With regard to the way the 2023 Act was constructed where sections have not been commenced until the codes of practice are in place, we approached this from a slightly different angle where the commencement of the Act is not fully dependent on the code of practice being fully completed.

Mr. Frank McNamara:

The new section 6A in the current Bill will be also subject to codes, which will be completed after commencement of the Act.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate that there are a number of stages to this but when will the codes actually be in effect?

Mr. Frank McNamara:

For CCTV, it would be after the passing of the Bill that is currently finishing in the Dáil. It has to go through the Seanad.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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On enactment-----

Mr. Frank McNamara:

The code should be in effect.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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That is fine. I might talk more broadly about the Department's use of the technology, particularly in terms of processing large volumes of information. In the area of international protection and asylum, while we must have safeguards in place, we are dealing with large volumes of data. Has consideration been given to using AI systems to assist in the processing of all the data to speed up some of the application processes?

Ms Louise Jevens:

Absolutely. A modernisation programme is taking place in the international protection and asylum area, which has taken paper out of the process and resulted in significant savings and time efficiencies. We intend to look at AI and other technologies that may provide opportunities to reduce administrative burden and provide efficiency. We are currently using AI on the immigration services side. For the AI we are using there, we are not using personal data. It is used against publicly available website data. Monitoring that and the training for staff around that have been foundational for us in how we will take this forward. We are putting in place digital governance for the development of digital systems, which includes AI, data and cyber, to make sure the governance is in place to allow us to use the systems. Risk assessment is a strong part of that. We will look at using technologies that will provide those sort of opportunities to us.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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In terms of drafting of legislation, and I realise part of it involves the Department and part of it involves the Office of the Attorney General, one of our challenges is we want to see legislation moving more quickly. What about the role of AI in the drafting of legislation?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

We do not currently utilise it for our drafting of heads of Bill, which is our primary end of involvement. I will not speak to the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel and what its intentions are within the Office of the Attorney General.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I assume the Department uses Microsoft products in the same way that the contract is with Microsoft. What assurances do the officials have that if they were asking somebody to draft legislation, they are not going to use Copilot? Is this part of the guidelines or is it something relating to sandboxing within the Department?

Ms Louise Jevens:

We have a policy on AI in the Department at the moment that is based on the use of AI in public services guidance itself. We have not rolled out Microsoft Copilot. We are looking at it in a small pocket of IT and at the use of it in a couple of areas. We will issue guidance on it in terms of what it is and is not used for. Currently, it is not-----

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I and other colleagues have used it in drafting Private Members' Bills.

We do not have the resources as individual members to assist in the drafting of legislation. As humans, we are still in the loop. We oversee it but we use Copilot to help us in the drafting of legislation. Why is it not used to a greater extent in the Department of justice, the Office of the Attorney General or wherever?

Ms Louise Jevens:

We will roll out Copilot. As I said, it is a pilot, for want of a better word, at the moment. We will do so but we must make sure we comply with guidance and regulation. The scenario the Cathaoirleach outlined is a good one where we can use it to draft and summarise documents as long as it is not submitted as a final document-----

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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It would not be unreasonable to say we could see Government drafting legislation with the aid of AI, obviously with human oversight, within the next 12 months.

Mr. Ben Ryan:

When we have the safeguards in place, have tested it and are happy enough it can be used in a manner that is safe, it would be possible. I take the point that Deputies are-----

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry. It is possible right now. The question is about in practice, if it is being trialled and so on. Being blunt, I favour using technology to help us draft legislation. Ultimately, it will be for us as elected members to make the decision but it speeds up the process. Part of our frustration is how long it takes for draft legislation to come about. Would it be fair to say that within 12 months we could see AI being used to assist in the drafting of legislation?

Mr. Ben Ryan:

I would not put a timeline on it. We are always interested in anything that speeds up the process. We are open to it. On the point of drafting a general scheme, our team is criminal justice legislation, so the team I have exclusively works on drafting legislation. They are not pulled into as many other things as a Deputy who wants to draft a general scheme for a Private Members' Bill would be. There is a consistency and learned skill set they continually develop and work on. If there are tools that can assist, we are open to them as long as they can be used in a manner that does not cause any difficulty.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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We have time for a second round. I will allow four minutes.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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Ms Jevens said, "At present, the Department’s use of AI is limited to a low-risk, supportive application." She also said, "Looking ahead, the Department’s approach is intentionally measured." Will she expand on how that is done? What is involved in the mechanism of the measurements?

Ms Louise Jevens:

Is that the approach being measured?

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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Yes.

Ms Louise Jevens:

At the moment, we are looking at what our ambition is in terms of AI - whether it is a low ambition or to do absolutely everything with AI. I think we are somewhere in the middle on that. In terms of ambition, that is the first piece. We spoke about using AI to support us in taking the administrative burden off staff, which is particularly useful. Documents were mentioned. We get a huge amount of documents and people deal with large amounts of data, so summarisation of data is an example of a good opportunity for us to look at it. There is verification of data potentially, where we get a huge amount of data and we have to decide quickly, or in a process, whether that document is valid. There are lots of applications for it. By putting the governance in place, which is what we are doing at the moment, we will be able to identify those opportunities and make sure the appropriate risk measures are in place and that we take a proper approach. We see it as part of the technology we will use under our new strategy.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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Sometimes, training data heavily favours specific geographical populations. How does the Department deal with that?

Ms Louise Jevens:

The system we use at the moment does not use any personal data at all. We would look at not using historical data if possible because there can be bias in it. With AI, data is the key. It is what it operates on. Part of our measured approach is making sure the data we have is good and valid. We are coming from a position where we had a lot of legacy systems that did not talk to each other, similar to our colleagues in courts who are using Lotus Notes.

The new systems we have been building - the modernised systems - have enabled us to look at and improve our data and data quality. The approach would be to not use historical data in training AI models, making sure we can stand over what we are training with from a data perspective.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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Ms Jevens is probably aware of the AI system in America where it was used for sentencing by particular judges. It was very biased against coloured people. It was just used in a wrong way.

Ms Louise Jevens:

As the committee knows, AI has advanced really quickly. If you looked at a deepfake video from five or six years ago you would not say they were very good quality but now they are. There have been a lot of advances in training of data and taking bias out of the picture. We would still have to make sure we put the risk process in place to ensure that data is not biased in that manner.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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On the point about legislative drafting, I do not have the same view as the Chair. As someone who, with my former hat on, drafted statutory instruments and was involved in drafting legislation, I have a fairly good understanding of it. It is not the Department of justice's responsibility, to be fair, to draft legislation. It is really a matter for the Office of the Attorney General. It is exceptionally important - particularly in criminal legislation, as Mr. Ryan said - that we get it right because so many court proceedings revolve around interpreting particular provisions of legislation. Perhaps an element of AI could support the explanatory memorandums around legislation or draft heads of Bills but for the actual laws we pass in our Parliament, unless there is some super-duper software I am not aware of, we have to be very cautious about how we deploy that. That is just an observation. Ms Jevens mentioned the potential use of AI in the asylum process, if I understood her correctly. What is the Department examining in that regard? What type of usage is under consideration?

Ms Louise Jevens:

We are not specifically looking at it in the asylum process at the moment. The use cases we have are more around business automation and supporting staff in processing. Asylum is one of the high-risk areas called out in the EU AI Act so we are very careful around what we would choose to use in that regard on the AI front. We are looking at other areas to support our staff in processing large volumes of data and to speed up with basic automations of manual tasks.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Can Ms Jevens give an example within the Department of justice? What processes are being looked at with the use of automation and could be expedited?

Ms Louise Jevens:

We have not started in terms of a pilot but we are considering document verification, whereby AI could be used to verify whether something is a valid document, such as a valid birth certificate from a particular country. There are tells in documents and you could use AI to identify if it is genuine or if there is a possibility that it is not. With the human-in-the-loop piece, it would be using AI to identify documents that need further examination. That is one example we might look at.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The documents Ms Jevens referred to would often be used in an asylum application process.

Ms Louise Jevens:

Potentially.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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An area that has been subject to a high degree of controversy is age assessment. Could Ms Jevens envisage AI being used? She mentioned birth certificates. Is that an area the Department of justice could consider as a usage case?

Ms Louise Jevens:

I do not work on the policy side but I would consider that a high-risk area. I do not think we would-----

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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An issue we have seen in age assessment is that cumulatively, I think over 300 persons who purported to be children ended up in Tusla-operated centres but it subsequently emerged that they were adults.

Obviously when we are talking about birth certificates and any documentation that can be verified, that necessarily deals with the question of age. Is that what Ms Jevens is talking about?

Ms Louise Jevens:

Not necessarily, no. I am not speaking specifically about that case, but just about document verification in general. I would have to refer to my policy colleagues and my operational colleagues on that.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Would the officials be working across Departments on that? Would they be working with the Department of Social Protection on PPSNs, for example? How would that work? We know from the chief information officer in the Department of public expenditure that a lot of the areas it is looking at - the life events, in terms of the deployment of AI - relate to Department of Social Protection-type services. How would that work in a justice context?

Ms Louise Jevens:

I am not sure we are involved in any of the specific life events programmes at the moment. The key thing when you are working across Departments is making sure that you have your data correct and valid and that you have ways of matching that data with the Department of Social Protection. In some instances our applicants might not even have a PPSN at that point so you would need to have the capability to be able to handle that. I can come back to the Deputy on that.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Through the Chair, Mr. McNamara mentioned when he thought the CCTV code was going to come into being. Maybe we could have a letter, following this meeting, outlining what the process is, where the code of conduct for CCTV is, how it relates to the legislation currently going through the Parliament and when the Minister is likely to sign that code of conduct so it can come into being. I would like a letter from the officials on that. Thanks very much, a Chathaoirligh.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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Thank you. Just for clarity, I was not proposing AI would replace civil servants. It is always a case of working in conjunction. It is about getting the drafting but obviously it will require expert human oversight. Ultimately, it is the legislators who make the decisions, so we are the ones responsible for whether it is good or bad law. The officials might just talk about the challenges within a Department. There are going to be obligations placed within a Department under the AI Act. We are making recommendations to the Government but we are keen as well to see the roll-out of the responsible guidelines and the implementation of the AI Act. The officials might share with us their Department's experience - the good, the bad and the ugly - and maybe there are lessons we can learn more widely.

Ms Louise Jevens:

I am sorry, a Chathaoirligh, is this in relation to the AI Act itself?

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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There are obligations being placed on Government Departments as part of the AI Act, but I mean even more generally in terms of how you embed a culture within the organisation of how we use AI responsibly. It is all very well having the guidelines but what does it mean in practical terms?

Ms Louise Jevens:

We always have good governance in the Department when it comes to developing systems and IT systems. Processing service design is one of our key stalwarts when we are looking at what we are doing. The key bit of the EU AI Act is that there is training and raising awareness for the staff. That is really key and the Department of public expenditure has provided modules on it and we provide some training ourselves. We have also trained our staff who are at the coalface using our customer service portal as well. It is about making sure we have the guardrails in place from a governance perspective but also having the training and the supports available for our staff so when they are using it they are comfortable that they are using it in the right way.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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Okay. I am quite happy with that. Thank you all very much for your contributions. I have been very heartened by how seriously all our witnesses and those from Government agencies are taking this issue. Forgive us if we are looking for timelines and deadlines but it is a critical part of our work. Thank you for your contribution today and the work you are doing in this space.