Ireland has established its national AI Office and divided AI supervision among sectoral regulators

On 21 July 2026 the Irish President signed the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Act 2026, which implements the AI Act. On that basis, the AI Office of Ireland (Oifig IS na hÉireann) was established on 30 July 2026 as an independent statutory body. Its first Chief Executive is Paul Byrne, previously Executive Director of Education, Innovation and AI at the Medical Council of Ireland.

Ireland has opted for a distributed model of supervision with central coordination. Oversight is divided among existing regulators. They include, for example, the Central Bank of Ireland, the media regulator Coimisiún na Meán, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), the communications regulator ComReg and the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA).

Their work is coordinated by the AI Office of Ireland, which acts as the single point of contact. It is to ensure consistent enforcement, cooperation and information sharing between authorities and to support their joint investigations. It also provides technical expertise and promotes innovation and AI literacy.

Supervision of general-purpose AI models and of AI systems in very large online platforms or very large online search engines, however, is exercised by the AI Office at EU level.