315. Deputy Robert O'Donoghue asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to provide the details of presentations or written submissions provided by companies (details supplied) to him or his departmental officials with respect to the regulation of artificial Intelligence, digital policy, and codes of practice; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51605/26]

Engaging with interested stakeholders, be that industry, civil society, academia and the general public, is a key feature of evidence-informed policy and a crucial part of good policy and legislation development.

My Department has an important role in understanding the views of enterprise in that regard and as such engages with a range of industry representative bodies and individual companies on a range of matters under our remit.

In recent times there has been a significant tranche of Digital and AI related policy and legislation initiatives underway at a European level and implementation of associated EU supports and national measures. At an EU level, this includes:

- European Commission Guidelines and Codes of Practices to support the implementation of various aspects of the AI Act.

- European Commission 7th Digital Omnibus incorporating separately the AI Act and the EU’s data acquis (e.g. GDPR, ePrivacy etc.).

- European Commission first review of the Digital Markets Act

At a national level, the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bill has been published and is currently under passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas.

In all these cases, public consultations have been launched, by the European Commission in relation to EU initiatives and by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment in relation to the Regulation of AI Bill, to facilitate the open and transparent sharing of views and positions by interested parties.

These public consultations are the primary mechanisms for Companies to submit their positions on relevant AI and digital policy and implementation initiatives. On occasion industry stakeholder representative groups and individual organisations will also share their submissions with officials in my Department to help raise awareness of key areas of interest and/or concern for those stakeholders. On that basis we have received submissions from a number of industry representative bodies and individual companies, including Meta, Google, and Microsoft, in relation to the Digital Omnibus, the AI Act and the Digital Markets Act, noting their perspective on proposed developments in those areas.