25 Best Thought Leaders on AI in Ireland (2026)

Ireland has quietly become one of the most significant AI ecosystems on the planet. The International Monetary Fund ranked Ireland first globally in its January 2026 Skill Readiness Index for AI readiness, and with the International AI Summit scheduled in Dublin in October 2026 as part of Ireland's EU Council Presidency, the island is no longer just a European base for the world's biggest tech companies. It is shaping the global conversation about what responsible, human-centred AI actually looks like in practice.

But behind those headline statistics are real people: researchers publishing landmark work on bias and accountability, founders building AI companies from Galway to Dublin, policy advisors navigating the EU AI Act, and community builders hosting the conversations that tie it all together. This list brings 25 of those people into one place.

Ireland's AI ecosystem spans academia, government, enterprise, startups, and civil society in ways that few countries its size can match. Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the national research centres ADAPT, Insight, and Lero are producing world-class AI research. OpenAI opened a Dublin office. The government has established a national AI Advisory Council, is building an AI Office to implement the EU AI Act, and has appointed a chair of Ireland's AI Advisory Council who is among the most respected AI policy figures in Europe. Meanwhile, independent founders are building companies from Galway to Limerick that are solving real problems with machine learning, natural language processing, and responsible AI.

This is not a ranking. These are 25 people worth knowing, following, and engaging with if you want to understand where AI in Ireland is going and why it matters far beyond this island. For leaders, executives, and organisations trying to navigate AI transformation, understanding who is shaping the thinking is the first step.

Jonno White delivers keynotes and workshops for leadership teams navigating AI-driven change, helping organisations build the communication, team dynamics, and culture that make innovation sustainable. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your next event.

Why Ireland's AI Ecosystem Is Worth Paying Attention To

Before diving into the people, it is worth understanding what makes Ireland's AI context distinctive. Ireland is home to the European headquarters of Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and OpenAI. That concentration of global tech infrastructure has created a talent pipeline and research collaboration network that punches well above the country's size.

Science Foundation Ireland funds dedicated AI research centres that collectively produce hundreds of PhD graduates each year. The ADAPT Centre at Trinity College Dublin focuses on AI-driven digital content technology. The Insight Research Centre for Data Analytics spans multiple universities. Lero, the Research Ireland Centre for Software, is headquartered at University of Limerick and covers AI across software engineering, autonomous systems, and healthcare. CeADAR, Ireland's national centre for applied AI, bridges academic research and industry adoption.

Ireland also sits at the intersection of EU regulatory ambition and US tech company operations, making it an unusually important place for the AI governance conversation. The EU AI Act is being implemented here in real time, and the voices interpreting, challenging, and building around that legislation are concentrated on this island. The 25 people below represent the full spectrum of that ecosystem.

1. Dr Patricia Scanlon

Chair, AI Advisory Council, Ireland; Founder, SoapBox Labs

Dr Patricia Scanlon is the most visible AI public figure in Ireland. She was appointed Ireland's first AI Ambassador by the government in 2022, a role that saw her lead a national conversation about the benefits, risks, and ethical dimensions of AI, and she now chairs Ireland's AI Advisory Council, providing independent expert advice to government on national AI strategy and regulation.

Scanlon founded SoapBox Labs in 2013, building the world's leading voice AI platform for children, trained on children's voices from 192 countries rather than adult speech data. She holds a PhD in voice AI from UCD and spent years at Bell Labs and IBM before founding her company. In 2018, Forbes named her one of the world's top 50 women in tech.

She is a regular conference keynote speaker, a TEDx presenter, and one of Ireland's most active public voices on trustworthy and human-centred AI. Her transition from founder to national policy figure represents Ireland's maturing relationship with AI governance. LinkedIn: active.

2. Dr Abeba Birhane

Director, AI Accountability Lab, Trinity College Dublin; Senior Advisor, Mozilla Foundation

Dr Abeba Birhane is one of Ireland's most internationally recognised AI researchers. She founded and leads the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin, which studies AI technologies and their downstream societal impacts with the goal of building greater accountability across the AI ecosystem. Her work focuses on audits of AI models and training datasets, and on the power dynamics and inequalities embedded in AI systems.

TIME named her to its inaugural TIME100 AI list in 2023. She has served on the United Nations Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Body on AI, Ireland's national AI Advisory Council, and participated in a Vatican summit on AI and human dignity alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. Her public scholarship bridges the technical and the political in ways that few researchers manage, and her research is cited internationally on questions of bias, fairness, and AI governance.

3. Prof Barry O'Sullivan

Director, Insight SFI Centre; Professor, University College Cork

Professor Barry O'Sullivan is one of Ireland's most senior and internationally connected AI academics. An award-winning researcher in artificial intelligence, constraint programming, and operations research, he has been a central figure in Irish AI policy for over a decade. He served as Vice Chair of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the group that produced the foundational EU AI ethics guidelines, and contributes to global Track II AI diplomacy at the intersection of military, defence, intelligence, and AI policy.

He is a member of the Digital Group at the Institute of International and European Affairs and sits on Ireland's national AI Advisory Council. At Insight, the SFI Research Centre spanning UCC, UCD, NUI Galway, and DCU, O'Sullivan leads one of the country's largest data analytics and AI research programmes. His combination of technical depth, policy engagement, and international networks makes him one of the most consequential AI figures in the country.

4. Prof John D. Kelleher

Director, ADAPT Research Centre; Chair of Artificial Intelligence, Trinity College Dublin

Professor John Kelleher leads ADAPT, the Research Ireland Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, one of the flagship AI research institutions in Europe. He holds the Chair of Artificial Intelligence at Trinity College Dublin and his research spans machine learning, natural language processing, language modelling, explainable AI, and making AI more environmentally sustainable.

He convened Ireland's National AI Leadership Forum in September 2025, bringing government, regulators, industry, academia, and civil society together to map practical steps for Ireland to become a European exemplar in AI governance and responsible deployment. He is the co-author of Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Predictive Data Analytics, used in universities around the world. His leadership of ADAPT puts him at the centre of Ireland's academic-industry AI collaboration, with ongoing partnerships with Microsoft, Meta, IBM, and Google.

5. Dr Susan Leavy

Assistant Professor, University College Dublin; Member, AI Advisory Council

Dr Susan Leavy is a leading Irish voice on trustworthy AI, AI ethics, and the intersection of language technology with gender and power. She is an Assistant Professor at UCD's School of Information and Communication Studies and a researcher with the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. She sits on Ireland's national AI Advisory Council and has been nominated as an Irish representative to the Global Partnership on AI.

Her research addresses how AI systems encode and reproduce social biases, particularly in natural language processing, and she has contributed to the International AI Safety Report covering 2025-26. She is a regular speaker at global forums including GPAI and the OECD, and her work sits at the intersection of academic rigour and direct policy application. She is one of the people translating what responsible AI means in practice for policymakers working to implement the EU AI Act.

6. Prof Deirdre Ahern

Professor of Law, Trinity College Dublin; Member, AI Advisory Council

Professor Deirdre Ahern is Trinity College Dublin's leading voice on AI regulation, corporate governance, and the legal dimensions of emerging technology. She is a member of Ireland's national AI Advisory Council and brings a legally grounded perspective to questions about how AI governance, corporate accountability, and the EU AI Act interact.

Her research addresses how law and regulatory frameworks must evolve to keep pace with AI-driven transformation, and she is a regular commentator on AI policy developments in both academic and public forums. She is active on LinkedIn with recent public commentary on AI governance and regulation, making her one of the more accessible academic voices in this space. As Ireland builds out its national AI Office to implement the EU AI Act, Ahern's legal analysis of what that means in practice is increasingly influential.

7. Sean Blanchfield

CEO and Co-Founder, Jentic; Member, Ireland's AI Advisory Council

Sean Blanchfield is one of Ireland's most prominent AI entrepreneurs and one of the clearest public voices on what AI means for the economy, jobs, and Ireland's strategic future. He co-founded Demonware, which was acquired by Activision, and now leads Jentic, a company building infrastructure for AI agents. He sits on Ireland's national AI Advisory Council.

He delivered the opening keynote at TechIreland's National AI Meet in September 2025, calling on decision-makers to treat AI as an existential economic opportunity and warning about the risks of Ireland being at the receiving end of someone else's revolution. His public commentary on AI, energy infrastructure, agentic AI systems, and Ireland's EU Presidency opportunity has made him one of the most direct and commercially grounded voices in the national conversation.

8. Mark Kelly

Founder, AI Ireland; Chief Commercial Officer, Alldus

Mark Kelly is the founder of AI Ireland, the organisation that runs the AI Ireland podcast, the annual AI Awards, and one of the most active AI networking communities in the country. The podcast has interviewed more than 750 global AI leaders and has become a primary window into both the Irish AI ecosystem and global AI trends for Irish audiences.

Kelly also serves as Chief Commercial Officer at Alldus, an AI recruitment and talent platform, giving him a ground-level perspective on how AI adoption is reshaping hiring and workforce requirements across Irish industry. He is one of the most consistently active Irish AI voices on LinkedIn and is a regular presence at Enterprise Ireland events, government consultations, and AI ecosystem gatherings. For anyone wanting to understand the connective tissue of Ireland's AI community, Mark Kelly is the person to follow.

9. Prof Alan Smeaton

Professor of Computing, Dublin City University; Founding Director, Insight

Professor Alan Smeaton is one of Ireland's most accomplished AI researchers. A Professor of Computing at Dublin City University, he was a founding director of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics and is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, having won its Gold Medal, one of the highest recognitions in Irish academic science. His research has spanned AI applications in computer vision, machine learning, wearable technology, lifelogging, and educational analytics.

He is a Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence, an accolade held by very few Irish researchers, and has decades of experience advising government on AI and data science. His perspective on the arc of Irish AI research, from its early academic roots to the current ecosystem, is valuable context for anyone working in this space. He is experienced in giving scientific advice to government and actively participates in public engagement activity.

10. Dr Harshvardhan Pandit

Assistant Professor, Dublin City University; Research Fellow, AI Accountability Lab

Dr Harshvardhan Pandit works at the intersection of AI governance, data privacy, and regulatory compliance. He is an Assistant Professor at Dublin City University's School of Computing and a Research Fellow at the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on using semantic web technologies to make GDPR compliance and EU AI Act implementation practical rather than just theoretical.

He co-chairs the W3C Data Privacy Vocabularies and Controls Community Group, which develops interoperable privacy standards used across the EU and beyond. He is a nominated Technical Expert for the European Data Protection Board and contributes to ISO, CEN/CENELEC, and IEEE standardisation activities on privacy and AI. In a period when organisations are scrambling to understand what EU AI Act compliance requires in practice, Pandit's technical work on making regulations machine-readable and auditable is among the most directly useful research being produced from Ireland.

11. Emma Redmond

Associate General Counsel, Head of EU Privacy and AI Governance, OpenAI

Emma Redmond is the first and most senior OpenAI team member based in Ireland, making her the face of how the world's most prominent AI company navigates the EU regulatory environment from a Dublin base. Her background spans LinkedIn and Stripe before OpenAI, giving her a track record across multiple phases of how platform companies build legal and governance frameworks in Europe.

Since OpenAI established its Dublin hub, Redmond has become the primary Irish public voice for how the EU AI Act applies to high-growth, high-capability AI companies. She is also a member of Ireland's national AI Advisory Council. Her position places her at the intersection of the most commercially significant AI deployment in the world and the most demanding regulatory environment for AI in the world, and what she says about how those two things coexist matters to organisations across Ireland and Europe.

12. Emerald de Leeuw-Goggin

Co-Founder, Women in AI Governance; Global Head of Privacy and AI Governance, Logitech

Emerald de Leeuw-Goggin has been recognised as the 2023 Privacy Executive of the Year and as a 2024 Women in AI Ambassador. She co-founded Women in AI Governance, a community and advocacy organisation dedicated to increasing the representation of women in AI policy and governance roles. Her work bridges the practical corporate governance of AI, where she leads privacy and AI governance for Logitech globally, and the ecosystem-level work of building a more inclusive AI leadership community.

She is active in Ireland's AI circles and has been featured in AI Ireland coverage and award contexts specifically for her AI governance and inclusion work. In a national conversation increasingly focused on trustworthy and human-centred AI, her voice on what governance actually looks like inside large organisations, and who gets to shape it, is distinctive.

13. John Clancy

Founder and CEO, Galvia; AI Person of the Year 2025

John Clancy is the founder and CEO of Galvia, a Galway-based AI decision intelligence platform that makes advanced analytics accessible to mid-market businesses traditionally ignored by enterprise-scale AI solutions. He won the AI Person of the Year award at the 2025 AI Awards, recognising his contribution to democratising AI adoption across Irish business.

Galvia's mission is built around the conviction that every business has unique data, and that AI should be built to reflect that uniqueness rather than forcing businesses into generic templates. Clancy is a member of the Irish Government's Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum and is a regular speaker at Irish and UK business conferences on practical AI transformation. He is active on LinkedIn sharing clear-eyed insights on what AI adoption actually looks like for the companies doing the work.

14. Prof David Lewis

Professor, Trinity College Dublin; Principal Investigator, ADAPT

Professor David Lewis is a leading Irish researcher in trustworthy AI, data protection, and AI standardisation. He is a principal investigator at the ADAPT Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin, where he leads the Transparent Digital Governance research strand covering data ethics, data protection, AI ethics, and data value.

He has contributed to international AI ethics standards work through IEEE, ISO, and CEN/CENELEC, and his research on making AI systems more transparent, accountable, and compliant with GDPR and the EU AI Act is widely cited. His work with Harshvardhan Pandit and others at ADAPT has produced some of the most practically useful research on how organisations can build AI governance frameworks that actually function. He is one of the senior academic voices helping shape how Ireland's research community engages with the regulatory demands of operating AI systems responsibly in Europe.

15. Haithem Afli

Associate Professor; Head of Human-Centred AI Group, Munster Technological University; ADAPT Researcher

Dr Haithem Afli leads the Human-Centred AI research group at Munster Technological University and is a researcher with the ADAPT Centre. His expertise spans natural language processing, applied machine learning, and human-centred AI design, and his work deliberately extends Ireland's AI research footprint beyond Dublin and the traditional university cities.

He has worked on NLP applications across healthcare, education, and public services, and is a speaker at AI events in Ireland and internationally. His inclusion on this list matters not just for his research but for what it represents: Ireland's AI ecosystem is not confined to a triangle between Trinity, UCD, and DCU. It reaches into Munster, Connacht, and beyond, and Afli is one of the people making that breadth visible.

16. Rena Maycock

Founder and CEO, Chirp

Rena Maycock is the founder and CEO of Chirp, a company applying AI to digital safety and child protection. Her work addresses one of the most urgent and often overlooked applications of AI responsibility: how AI systems can be built and governed to protect children in digital environments rather than exposing them to new risks.

She has been recognised by AI Ireland and the broader Irish AI community for her work at this intersection of responsible AI and practical child safety. She is active on LinkedIn and has been featured as a podcast guest on AI Ireland, making her one of the more visible voices for socially significant AI applications beyond the enterprise and research worlds. In a policy environment focused on human-centred AI, her practical focus on what that means for the most vulnerable users is valuable.

17. Dr Marguerite Barry

Assistant Professor, University College Dublin; ADAPT Researcher

Dr Marguerite Barry is an Assistant Professor at UCD and a researcher with the ADAPT Centre, with expertise in responsible innovation, privacy and ethics, and human-computer interaction. Her research addresses how AI systems can be designed with human values embedded from the start rather than retrofitted after deployment, and she contributes to national and European conversations about what responsible AI policy looks like in practice.

She is a senior adviser at the Centre for Digital Policy and has published research that bridges the technical design of AI systems and the social and ethical frameworks that should govern them. Her voice is particularly useful for organisations trying to understand how responsible innovation principles translate into procurement decisions, product design choices, and governance structures rather than remaining abstract commitments.

18. Stephen Redmond

Founder, Straiteis AI; Author, AI: Curious to Capable

Stephen Redmond is one of Ireland's most accessible and practical AI educators for business and executive audiences. He founded Straiteis AI, a consulting and education practice focused on helping organisations develop genuine AI literacy and strategy capability rather than just awareness. He is the author of AI: Curious to Capable, which is targeted at business leaders who need to move from general interest in AI to the specific understanding required to make good strategic and procurement decisions.

He is active on LinkedIn with recent public commentary on AI adoption in Irish business, and his practical consulting lens makes him a useful follow for anyone working in the organisational reality of AI transformation rather than the research frontier. He represents a category of Irish AI thought leaders who are often underrepresented in academic-heavy lists: the practitioner educators who translate AI for the leaders making the decisions.

19. Dr Eoin Delaney

Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin

Dr Eoin Delaney is a next-generation technical voice from Trinity College Dublin whose research focuses on responsible machine learning, fairness, explainability, and sustainability in ML systems. In a field that often separates ethics people from ML people, Delaney works directly on the technical mechanisms that make machine learning more fair and more explainable, not just on the philosophical frameworks that describe what fairness should mean.

His work on counterfactual explanations, which help users understand why an AI system made a particular decision, is directly relevant to EU AI Act compliance requirements for high-risk AI systems. He is an emerging academic voice whose combination of technical rigour and applied focus on responsible ML makes him one of the most interesting researchers to follow from the next generation of Irish AI talent.

20. Meghan Dowling

Computational Speech and Language Scientist, T-Pro

Meghan Dowling is a computational speech and language scientist working at T-Pro, a company specialising in AI-powered speech recognition and transcription for healthcare. Her work sits at the intersection of automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, and the real-world demands of deploying AI in clinical environments where accuracy and reliability are not optional.

She has been recognised by AI Ireland and featured in its Women in AI community, making her one of the visible voices for both applied AI in healthcare and for women building careers at the technical frontier of AI in Ireland. Healthcare AI is one of the most significant application areas emerging in Ireland, and Dowling is a practitioner with the technical depth and domain expertise to speak credibly about what building it actually requires.

21. Prof Barry Smyth

Professor of Computer Science, University College Dublin; Insight Researcher

Professor Barry Smyth is one of Ireland's most accomplished and internationally recognised AI researchers, with expertise in recommender systems, case-based reasoning, and personalisation technology. He has been a Professor of Computer Science at UCD for decades and has co-founded multiple successful companies based on AI research, demonstrating a rare combination of academic depth and commercial application.

His research group at Insight has produced a stream of PhD graduates and alumni who now hold senior AI roles in companies around the world. He has been involved in AI research at UCD since the early days of the discipline in Ireland, and his institutional knowledge of how Ireland's AI ecosystem developed, combined with his ongoing research activity, makes him one of the senior technical voices most worth engaging.

22. Sana Khan

Founder, Riskwise GRC; Barrister

Sana Khan is a barrister and the founder of Riskwise GRC, a governance, risk, and compliance consultancy specialising in AI law and responsible AI. She is one of the clearest public voices in Ireland on the practical legal implications of the EU AI Act for businesses, and brings the combined perspective of a practising lawyer and an AI governance consultant to questions that most organisations are still struggling to frame clearly.

She is active on LinkedIn sharing deep dives into AI Act compliance frameworks and risk management approaches, and leads the Future Edge programme focused on ethical AI in creative and media sectors. She represents an important category of Irish AI thought leader, not the researcher or the founder, but the legal and governance practitioner who helps organisations understand what their obligations actually are and how to build systems that meet them.

23. Prof Aphra Kerr

Professor, University College Dublin; Senior Adviser, Centre for Digital Policy; Co-PI, ADAPT

Professor Aphra Kerr is a digital policy researcher whose work bridges AI and platform governance, the societal impacts of automated systems, and the regulatory frameworks shaping how digital technologies are governed in Europe. She is a Professor at UCD, a senior adviser at the Centre for Digital Policy, and a co-principal investigator at the ADAPT Centre.

Her research on how AI and platform governance intersect with questions of democracy, public interest, and accountability is relevant to anyone trying to understand the political and social context in which AI operates, not just the technical capabilities. Her research is shaping how Ireland thinks about the governance of digital systems in ways that reach into government policy and industry practice.

24. Marija Siddik

Co-Founder and CEO, Safentic

Marija Siddik is the co-founder and CEO of Safentic, an Irish startup focused on AI safety, governance, and trustworthy AI. Her work addresses one of the most important structural gaps in AI adoption: most organisations can deploy AI, but very few have the governance and control mechanisms to deploy it safely and in ways that are auditable.

Safentic builds the infrastructure to bridge that gap, and Siddik is one of the emerging founder voices in Ireland working specifically on the safety and governance layer rather than the capability layer of AI. She has a public LinkedIn presence and is part of the next generation of Irish AI founders whose work is shaped as much by the governance demands of the EU AI Act as by the technical possibilities of the current generation of AI systems.

25. Dr Mihael Arcan

Co-Founder, Lua Health; NLP Researcher

Dr Mihael Arcan is the co-founder of Lua Health, an Irish startup applying NLP and explainable AI to digital health. His background is in academic NLP research, and Lua Health represents the kind of crossover figure that Ireland's AI ecosystem is increasingly producing: researchers with genuine technical depth who move into startup mode to apply that research to real-world problems.

Healthcare AI in Ireland is a growing priority, with multiple research-to-startup pathways being built through the national research centres and university incubators. Arcan and Lua Health are part of that wave. His combination of NLP expertise, explainable AI focus, and healthcare application domain makes him a useful follow for anyone tracking where Ireland's applied AI innovation is heading.

Common Mistakes Organisations Make When Engaging with AI Thought Leadership

Paying attention to AI thought leadership is valuable. But there are common mistakes organisations and individuals make when trying to translate that thought leadership into action, and it is worth naming them directly.

The most common mistake is treating AI thought leadership as a substitute for building internal capability. Following the right people on LinkedIn is not the same as developing your team's understanding of what AI means for your specific context, decisions, and risks. Thought leaders set the frame. Your organisation has to do the work of applying it.

A second mistake is over-indexing on research voices and under-indexing on practitioner voices. The academic researchers on this list are doing essential work, but their research timelines and the operational realities of deploying AI in a business run on different clocks. If you are a leader making decisions about AI this quarter, you need to be reading both: the researchers who tell you what the long-term risks and possibilities are, and the practitioners who tell you what is working in organisations like yours right now.

A third mistake is treating the AI conversation as primarily a technology conversation rather than a leadership and people conversation. Almost every voice on this list, when pressed about where AI adoption succeeds and fails, comes back to the same answer: it comes down to whether the leadership team understands the change they are managing, communicates it well, and builds a culture where people feel equipped rather than threatened. That is not a technology problem. That is a leadership problem.

Jonno White works with leadership teams navigating exactly that challenge, running workshops and keynote sessions that help organisations build the communication, culture, and team dynamics that make AI adoption successful rather than just disruptive. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your next leadership event.

Implementation Guide: How to Build a Personal AI Learning System from This List

Following 25 people on LinkedIn is not a strategy. It is a starting point. Here is a practical approach to turning this list into an ongoing learning system.

Start by selecting five people from this list whose primary expertise most directly overlaps with what you need to understand in the next 12 months. If you are a leader focused on governance and compliance, your five might include Abeba Birhane, Harshvardhan Pandit, Sana Khan, Deirdre Ahern, and Emma Redmond. If you are more focused on practical enterprise adoption, your five might include John Clancy, Mark Kelly, Stephen Redmond, Sean Blanchfield, and Barry O'Sullivan.

Listen to the AI Ireland podcast. Mark Kelly has built one of the most consistent libraries of Irish AI conversations available, and the 750-plus episodes represent an extraordinary resource for anyone trying to understand both the Irish ecosystem and the global trends shaping it.

Attend public events. The AI Awards, hosted annually by AI Ireland, brings many of the people on this list into one room. The International AI Summit in Dublin in October 2026 will be one of the most significant AI governance gatherings in Europe this year. These are not just networking events. They are the spaces where the Irish AI conversation is shaped in real time.

Pay attention to the ADAPT and Insight Centre output. Both research centres publish working papers, host events, and produce graduates whose work often surfaces important ideas before they reach the broader business conversation. Finally, read Ireland's AI Advisory Council publications. The Council's 2025 recommendations report covers skills, adoption, governance, competitiveness, and societal impacts in unusually actionable ways for a government advisory document.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the most influential AI thought leader in Ireland right now?

Dr Patricia Scanlon, as Chair of Ireland's AI Advisory Council and the country's former AI Ambassador, holds the most visible national leadership position. Dr Abeba Birhane is Ireland's most internationally recognised AI researcher. For the entrepreneurial and community-building side of the ecosystem, Mark Kelly at AI Ireland is the most consistently present public voice. Influence in Ireland's AI ecosystem is distributed, which is actually one of its strengths.

Which Irish universities lead in AI research?

Trinity College Dublin is home to the ADAPT Centre and the AI Accountability Lab and has the largest concentration of AI faculty. University College Dublin hosts the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, CeADAR, and several of Ireland's leading AI researchers. Dublin City University co-hosts Insight and ADAPT affiliate activities. Munster Technological University, University of Limerick, and NUI Galway are also significant AI research sites, with Lero headquartered at Limerick and Insight at Galway.

How does Ireland compare to the UK and Germany in AI?

Ireland's AI ecosystem punches above its weight because of its unusual combination of global tech company presence, a world-class university research base, and a government that has moved faster than most European countries to build national AI governance infrastructure. The IMF ranked Ireland first globally for AI workforce readiness in January 2026. What Ireland lacks, compared with the UK or Germany, is domestic scale: fewer large indigenous AI companies and a smaller internal market. What it has is an unusual bridge role between the US tech ecosystem and the European regulatory environment, which is increasingly valuable as AI governance becomes a global priority.

Who should I follow for EU AI Act commentary from Ireland?

Emma Redmond at OpenAI, Sana Khan at Riskwise GRC, Deirdre Ahern at Trinity College Dublin, and Harshvardhan Pandit at DCU are the four names to start with. Barry Scannell at William Fry, a member of Ireland's AI Advisory Council and a partner in the law firm's technology department, is also worth following if you want a legal practice rather than academic perspective.

Who are the leading women in AI in Ireland?

Patricia Scanlon, Abeba Birhane, Susan Leavy, Deirdre Ahern, Emerald de Leeuw-Goggin, Meghan Dowling, Rena Maycock, Marguerite Barry, and Marija Siddik all deserve mention. AI Ireland has specifically highlighted the women in its ecosystem through its Women in AI recognition programme, and the names on this list reflect that community.

Can I hire someone to help my organisation navigate AI leadership challenges?

Yes. Jonno White delivers keynotes and workshops for leadership teams and organisations working through the human dimensions of AI transformation: how to communicate change, how to build team cultures that make AI adoption work, and how to have the difficult conversations that arise when roles and responsibilities shift. He works with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Final Thoughts

Ireland's AI ecosystem in 2026 is one of the most interesting in the world, not because of the size of the numbers but because of the quality of the conversation. The people on this list are not just reacting to AI. They are shaping how it is built, governed, and understood. They are asking harder questions than most national AI conversations manage to ask, and they are doing so from an island that sits at the intersection of American technological ambition and European regulatory seriousness.

For leaders, executives, and organisations paying attention to AI, understanding who these people are and what they are saying is one of the most valuable investments of attention you can make. The decisions shaping how AI develops in this part of the world are being made right now, and the 25 people on this list are among those making them.

If your organisation is working through the leadership and team challenges that AI transformation creates, Jonno White can help. He delivers keynote sessions and workshops helping leadership teams build the communication skills, team cultures, and decision-making frameworks that make AI adoption work at the human level. Reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect, whether your event is in Dublin, London, Singapore, or Sydney.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits across the UK, India, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Finland, Namibia, and more. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.