Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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616. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if his Department has taken advice in respect of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) within his Department in 2024 and to date in 2025; if any section of his Department currently makes use of artificial intelligence; if he will outline the purposes it is utilised for and costs associated with same; if he has consulted with any consultancy firms in respect of the use of AI; if he will provide a schedule of consultants engaged and costs of same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6331/25]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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My Department has taken advice in respect of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Department during the development of the AI policy, from the following organisations.

• The Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council.
• Gartner Ireland Limited Research and Consultancy Service.
• CeADAR the National Centre for AI and the European Digital Innovation Hub for AI in Ireland.

• Predicting the likelihood of TB outbreaks.
• Image analysis for identifying species susceptible to H5N1 (Bird flu).
• Customer Segmentation analysis for developing Agri-Food policies.
• Analysis for identifying risk factors for Microbial Food Safety.
• Analysing content to produce IT documentation.
• Automatically Preparing IT test scenarios.

• Smart text analysis to prevent and contain data breaches.

• In respect of Cognitive Services, €2,888 was spent over the course of 2024, researching potential artificial intelligence benefits for my Department.
• Related Cloud Infrastructure, to support those services, totalled €2,805 in the same period.

• No new funding has been allocated in the upcoming fiscal year.

• Amazon Web Service (AWS)
• EY
• Version1
• Sogeti
• Deloitte