REVEALED: The Government's RADICAL plan to counter AI threat to Irish jobs as minister warns of a 'huge hollowing out of the middle classes'

Published: 15:25, 6 June 2026 | Updated: 15:25, 6 June 2026 The Government plans to upskill 100,000 ‘white-collar’ workers across the country as the AI Minister warned the State is facing the biggest jobs shake-up since the industrial revolution. The move comes amid the loss of 1,000 jobs in the tech sector and growing coalition fears of Ireland’s overreliance of corporation tax receipts coming from multi-national giants. To counter the threat posed by artificial intelligence, Enterprise Minister Peter Burke is overseeing the biggest-ever reskilling and retraining programme undertaken in the State. And his junior minister with responsibility for Artificial Intelligence, Niamh Smyth, said that the Government will be doing more to encourage greater numbers of young people back into taking ‘AI-proof’ apprenticeships. She told the Mail: ‘The only certainty in the economic landscape we will see, and will have to react to, is more Meta and Covalen-style job losses.’ To counter the threat posed by artificial intelligence , Enterprise Minister Peter Burke is overseeing the biggest-ever reskilling and retraining programme undertaken in the State. This was a reference to the recently announced plans by the social media giant to shed 350 of its 1,800 Dublin-based staff, while more than 700 workers at Covalen – which provides contracted services for Meta – are also set to lose their jobs over the coming weeks. While many white-collar jobs are under threat from AI, the Government is struggling to find the 100,000 extra builders and skilled tradespeople needed to meet its pre-election promise to build 60,000 new homes a year. Minister Smyth said: ‘When the tech bros are saying the jobs young people should be training for are in the trades, then we need to take note of that.’ In an indication of the scale of the expected disruption to the labour market, the Cavan-Monaghan TD said: ‘AI is a new industrial revolution – we cannot avoid it. We have to plan for the worst, hope for the best and go into a changed world with our eyes open.’ Enterprise Minister Peter Burke is overseeing the biggest-ever reskilling and retraining programme undertaken in the State Aside from reskilling the workforce, Ms Smyth said the departments of Enterprise and Higher Education are progressing ‘new research and learning centres’ that track technology-related job losses and analyse the evolving skills of the labour market. She added these ‘data observatories… will allow us to get ahead of disruptive change rather than just react to it. They will ensure that, as in the first phase of the tech revolution, we will be at the head of the curve.’ There are fears up to as many as eight in every 10 tech jobs internationally could be lost over the coming decade. Ireland – with our reliance on corporation tax receipts and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) – is seen as particularly vulnerable to the feared impending AI economic earthquake. Amid fears within Government the Meta job losses are just ‘the tip of the iceberg’, there are growing concerns the Exchequer will be hit by a ‘double whammy’ of both lost corporation tax income and PAYE revenue from job losses. Minister Burke told the MoS: ‘The Government is acutely aware there may be significant churn through the impact of AI on the jobs market.’ Aside from reskilling the workforce, Niamh Smyth said the departments of Enterprise and Higher Education are progressing ‘new research and learning centres’ that track technology-related job losses and analyse the evolving skills of the labour market Faced with the prospect of an unprecedented labour market upheaval on the way, the Minister revealed that his department ‘is responding in real time with transformational upskilling’. He said: ‘The IDA set out to upskill 40,000 people in their client companies over its five-year strategy. We are in year one and they have hit 33,000 already. ‘Our biggest challenge will be our competitiveness, and my action plan agreed by Government will be key in keeping our value proposition strong and attracting further investment.’ Another Cabinet source said that while the IDA had ‘exceeded all expectations’, the final figure for upskilling would be closer to 100,000. They told the MoS: ‘While there has never been a technological revolution that has not ended up creating more jobs, the initial response to AI will have to consist of a massive retraining and upskilling programme of up to 100,000 employees.’ The minister also warned of a significant ‘budgetary impact from lost AI jobs. There had been a sense after Covid there was an excess of tech jobs, and that there would be slow economic growth in this area. The difficulties have been significantly accentuated by AI job losses.’ They added the Government’s approach to the next Budget ‘will have to focus very much on developing Irish SMEs [small and medium enterprises] and on how we start to grow the national cake, rather than how we cut it’. Other ministers offered a gloomier assessment, with one Cabinet source warning that AI knock-on effects will see ‘a huge hollowing-out of the middle classes’. The minister told the MoS: ‘Meta is just the first wave of a fundamental change in employment. ‘The real challenges will come when AI hits the next level, the banks, insurance companies, it’s then that you are going to be looking at a huge hollowing-out of the middle classes. ‘The real challenges will come when AI hits the next level, the banks, insurance companies, it’s then that you are going to be looking at a huge hollowing-out of the middle classes.' ‘It is going to hit the very people who think they are winners, they’ve bought the house, have two cars, one of them EV, they’re in what they think are recession-proof jobs. Those are the people who will be on the front line.’ They added: ‘When it comes to the so-called boomers, Meta is only the tip of the iceberg.’ The threat AI poses to the economy was further underlined by the Governor of the Central Bank this week. Gabriel Makhlouf told RTÉ he will soon be writing to Finance Minister Simon Harris in advance of the Budget, warning Ireland is overly dependent on corporation tax and ‘we need to broaden our tax base’. And despite the huge Government-led reskilling programme, Social Democrats enterprise spokeswoman Sinéad Gibney warned Ireland is ‘not ready’ for the looming AI-driven labour crisis. Google Ireland's head offices on Barrow Street in the Docklands district of Dublin city She told the MoS: ‘Labour displacement from AI will not just affect the tech sector. It will come at us on a different scale to anything we’ve known before as a society and whole swathes of employment will be affected. ‘A good way to think about it is that if your job is largely text-based, if you work with words and figures, your job is under threat. AI is coming for it. ‘Anyone who spends time on spreadsheets and documents – lawyers, journalists, accountants, customer service agents – is at risk of an AI tool doing their job quicker and with much less effort. ‘All of these professions are going to be transformed, and we are not ready for it.’ The Dublin Rathdown TD claimed the Government’s retraining drive does not take into account ‘the decline in quality work we are seeing right now’. She added: ‘When asked about labour displacement from AI, Government representatives reference retraining, how jobs will change and even improve. ‘But this does not tally with the increased precarity of work and decline of quality in work that we’re already seeing. Right now, 720 Covalen workers based in my own constituency, contractors to Meta, are facing job losses after training the AI tools that will now replace them. That’s in addition to the direct redundancies that Meta has just announced.’ She said that the Government, ‘in their desperation to cosy up to Big Tech… are driving the same deregulation agenda for these companies at European level, disguised as “simplification” which is being pushed by [US President Donald] Trump and his band of tech-broligarchs.’ Despite the criticism, and pessimistic view of some of his cabinet colleagues, Higher Education Minister James Lawless defended the Government’s reskilling programme and insisted AI also brings ‘opportunities’. He told the MoS: ‘AI is coming at us fast – it brings challenges but it also brings opportunities. Ultimately it promises another productivity tool, a generationally transformative one on the scale of the mass internet, personal computers or smart phones. ‘Lifelong learning and on-the-job upskilling are key to this for the “non-digital natives”. Mid-career sites like AIready.ie, which I recently launched, aim to demystify the technology and get people up to speed by using familiar, day-to-day use cases.’ Minster Lawless also said the State will have to ‘train one million people in this new technology over time’. Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.