The Irish Government’s Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026 was published on 17 June 2026.

The Bill makes one notable change to the institutional design set out in the General Scheme published in February: the AI Office of Ireland will now simply coordinate the national regulatory system and act as the single point of contact. It will no longer hold a designation as a market surveillance authority (MSA).

Background to the Bill

The Bill is the operational counterpart to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU AI Act, which has direct effect across the European Union (EU). Its purpose is to build the national supervisory, investigative and sanctioning machinery that the Regulation presupposes, and to establish the institution at its centre, the AI Office of Ireland. The publication coincides with Ireland’s assumption of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, and the AI Office must be established on or before 1 August 2026 to meet the Regulation’s deadlines.

The Bill operates alongside the EU (Artificial Intelligence) (Designation) Regulations 2025 (S.I. No. 366 of 2025), the Designation Regulations, which fix the identity of the MSAs and competent authorities. The result is a distributed model under which the existing sectoral regulators oversee AI within their domains while a central body provides coordination and a small set of centralised functions. That model, agreed by Government during 2025, was evident in the General Scheme; the published Bill settles the precise role of the central body.

The change from the General Scheme

Under the General Scheme, the AI Office was to be designated both as an MSA for the purposes of Article 70(1) of the AI Act and as the single point of contact for the purposes of Article 70(2). The explanatory material accompanying the Scheme treated the market surveillance designation as a technical step that enabled the single-point-of-contact role, while acknowledging that the Office would have no sector of supervision of its own.

Interestingly, Article 70(2) requires that the single point of contact be an MSA – so unless the AI Office obtains this designation, Ireland will not comply with Article 70(2).

The functions of the AI Office, set out in section 9, are coordinating and facilitative in character, and the Bill does not designate the Office as an MSA. The single-point-of-contact role is preserved by section 42, which also revokes the interim designation previously made under Regulation 6 of S.I. No. 366 of 2025 and confirms the statutory Office in that role. The MSAs under the Bill are therefore the existing sectoral regulators designated under the Designation Regulations, and the AI Office sits above that network as its coordinator and as the conduit to the European Commission. The frontline investigative and enforcement powers are exercised by the sectoral authorities, and the AI Office’s leverage is coordinative, advisory, and reputational.

The functions of the AI Office

The AI Office is established as an independent body corporate, governed by a board of seven members appointed by the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment on the recommendation of the Public Appointments Service, and led by a Chief Executive Officer appointed by the board. Its statutory functions are to:

• coordinate the competent authorities to encourage consistent implementation of the AI Act;
• facilitate co-operation, information sharing and joint enforcement between them;
• promote AI innovation and literacy;
• enhance public awareness of AI and of the rights and obligations the Regulation creates;
• facilitate access to technical, legal and regulatory expertise; and
• advise the Minister.

The Office is also responsible for maintaining a national AI register, establishing a co-operation forum, and operating one or more regulatory sandboxes, with priority access for SMEs and start-ups.

The Bill provides that the Office is independent in the performance of its functions. That independence is qualified by the Minister’s power to direct compliance with the Government’s stated AI policies. This power cannot reach the adjudication and administrative-fines provisions or the coordination, co-operation and expertise functions.

Where supervision and enforcement now sit

Because the Bill does not designate the AI Office as an MSA, organisations that develop, deploy, import, or distribute AI systems will engage in substantive compliance with their sectoral regulator under the Designation Regulations. The powers conferred on those authorities are extensive and follow established enforcement rules. Authorised officers may enter and inspect premises, require the production of records, take samples (including under a cover identity), and seek access to technical documentation, to training and testing data, and, in defined circumstances, to source code. The graduated instruments include contravention and prohibition notices, the seizure and disposal of unsafe products, a court-based forfeiture order, and a notice requiring the removal of online content where no other effective means exist to eliminate a serious risk.

The Bill provides three routes to administrative sanction. A general regime is available to the designated MSAs, under which a matter investigated by an authorised officer may be referred to an independent adjudicator, whose finding the authority adopts and whose administrative fine takes effect only on confirmation by the High Court. The Central Bank of Ireland applies its existing procedure under the Central Bank Act 1942, which the Bill amends to bring the AI Act within its supervisory framework. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission receives a new procedure through amendments to the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014. The financial ceilings follow the AI Act, reaching its highest tier for breaches of the Article 5 prohibitions, up to €35 million or 7% of worldwide annual turnover, with a domestic cap of €1 million for public bodies.

Practical implications for organisations

The clarification of the AI Office’s role reinforces a message already implicit in the distributed model. The body an organisation will engage with on substantive compliance is its sectoral regulator, and the AI Office will matter principally as the single point of contact, the operator of the national register and sandbox, and a source of coordination and expertise. Organisations whose AI systems touch several regulated domains should anticipate engagement with more than one authority, and the complaint-handling and co-operation provisions will determine which authority takes the lead in a given matter.

Comment

The Bill has been published as initiated, and several provisions may be refined as it passes through the Oireachtas. The decision to confine the AI Office to a coordinating and single-point-of-contact role reflects the logic of the distributed model. It places front-line supervision with the regulators that hold the relevant sectoral expertise. Two questions are likely to occupy the later stages: the resourcing of the sectoral authorities for their new functions, following the funding levy proposed in the General Scheme not being carried into the Bill, and the calibration of the enforcement and penalty provisions. For organisations, the months before the establishment of the AI Office are a window to map their systems to the relevant authorities and to prepare for supervision that, in the first instance, is clearly sectoral.