Ireland secures EU member states' backing for the Dublin Declaration on trustworthy, safe and sovereign AI

Ireland's Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment said on 14 October that it had secured support from EU member states for the Dublin Declaration on Trustworthy, Safe and Sovereign Artificial Intelligence, which was agreed in the run-up to the International AI Summit that Ireland hosted in Dublin that day. In a notice published on 15 October, the department says the declaration, adopted on 14 October, commits signatories to work together in seven priority areas: AI safety and resilience; adoption of trustworthy AI across public services and industry; European AI sovereignty; infrastructure, skills and computing capacity; the sustainability of AI technologies; public sector innovation; and European and international cooperation on AI governance and innovation. The department did not say which or how many member states signed. Minister of State Niamh Smyth called it "a strong political signal of Member States' shared commitment to reinforce and accelerate the important work already under way at European level". Alongside the declaration, Ireland set out national measures including a National AI Literacy Taskforce, a €21 million AI Startup Accelerator Programme and an AI Regulatory Sandbox, run through the National AI Office of Ireland, to support compliance with the EU AI Act.

What it means for business: the declaration is a political commitment and creates no new legal obligations; Ireland's planned AI regulatory sandbox may give startups and SMEs a way to test AI products with regulators while preparing for the EU AI Act.