Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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582. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if his Department has a policy, or has issued guidance to staff on the use of artificial intelligence, large language model, natural language processing, generative or otherwise, or products based thereon in the course of their duties; if this has been communicated to staff; if he will publish same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36135/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) is guided by the Interim Guidelines for Use of AI in the Public Service published by the Public Service Transformation Delivery Unit in the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer and by the National Cyber Security Centre on ICT policy and security matters.

Beyond this, DCEDIY does not have a specific policy on the use of artificial intelligence. DCEDIY has recently upgraded its suite of standard office productivity tools to the latest version of these applications, based on the Microsoft 365 platform.

This platform includes additional business intelligence, process automation, app development, and app connectivity products we avail of to develop line of business solutions for the Department. The underlying technology for this platform includes services that are labelled as A.I. DCEDIY does not generate any content using A.I. and does not use A.I. for decision making. DCEDIY does not have any specific costs associated with A.I.; DCEDIY has not consulted with any consultancy firms in respect of the use of A.I.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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583. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if his Department, or any agency under his auspices, has ever used any artificial intelligence software in the preparation of response to parliamentary questions, or in responses to any correspondence from outside the organisation; the details of same if applicable; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36154/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I wish to advise that officials in this Department, or any agency under its auspices, are not authorised to use Artificial Intelligence software in the preparation of responses to Parliamentary Questions, or in responses to any correspondence from outside the organisation. This is in line with advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) released in June 2023.