Written answers
Thursday, 20 February 2025
Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Artificial Intelligence
Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)
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302. 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 the Department; if any section of his Department currently makes use of AI; the purposes it is utilised for and costs associated with same; and if he has consulted with any consultancy firms in respect of the use of AI. [7053/25]
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 artificial intelligence 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.
The following AI projects are used within the Department, for research and analysis purposes.
- 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.
The above AI projects were developed in-house with no additional costs to my Department.
The following Department operations are conducted using artificial intelligence tools.
- Smart text analysis to prevent and contain data breaches.
This AI tool was developed as a value add under a contract that was in place at that time with no cost to my Department.
2024 Costs:
- 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.
All current and future AI use cases are subject to human review, data protection and governance measures. My Department is committed to ensuring that any use of AI is informed by an assessment of any potential human rights and equality implications, with a need for careful management in accordance with privacy and broader ethical and legal frameworks.
The following firms were consulted, at no cost to the Department, in respect of the use of AI.
- Amazon Web Service (AWS)
- EY
- Version1
- Sogeti
- Deloitte
My Department engaged with Gartner Ireland Limited on an ongoing basis as part of a general engagement as an ICT research and consultancy service for all IT functions, including AI. This service was leveraged as part of the operational running costs for the Department.
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