Talent is the biggest barrier to AI adoption even as organisations move quickly from experimentation to deployment, new research from Deloitte Ireland shows.
The findings come from Deloitte’s state of AI in the Enterprise, the Untapped Edge 2026, a flagship global AI study which gathered responses from 3,235 director to C-suite leaders across 24 countries, including 50 executives in Ireland.
The findings show that talent strategy has become the critical success factor in the roll out of AI across businesses here.
Among Irish leaders surveyed:
- 84% said skills gaps are the main barrier to traditional AI adoption
- 52% said the same for generative AI
- In response, 66% are investing in upskilling and reskilling programmes, alongside targeted hiring of specialist AI talent (54%) and broader workforce education to raise AI fluency (48%)
- 58% are hiring specialist talent to fill data-related skills gaps
“What we’re seeing across Ireland and globally is a decisive shift toward job redesign, new skills and new ways of working,” points out Emmanuel Adeleke, Partner Technology & Transformation.
“It shows us that organisations that invest in reskilling, workforce confidence and human-AI collaboration will be the ones that will turn productivity gains into lasting competitive advantage. The results align with what we are seeing on the ground with clients. AI is reshaping jobs and the talent agenda has become the critical success factor in the AI era.”
A new way of working
While workforce reductions are expected to remain limited in the near term, the Irish findings of the survey show:
- 90% report moderate to extensive job redesign already underway as AI becomes embedded in enterprise
- 60% expect overall headcount to fall by less than 10% over the next 12 months.
- 98% said AI has improved speed of decision making and execution
- 84% report achieving productivity gains today
Data Sovereignty
Ireland’s position as a major European data hosting hub and EU regulatory jurisdiction places data residency, sovereign AI capability and compliance alignment high on the executive agenda.
Deloitte’s global State of AI in the Enterprise report finds that 83% of organisations worldwide view sovereign AI as important to their strategic planning.
In Ireland, the majority of respondents (84%) said over one-fifth (21%) of their AI tech stack is owned or controlled by foreign vendors and nearly half have more than 40% foreign ownership. An AI tech stack is the set of technologies an organisation uses to build and run AI systems, including cloud infrastructure, data storage and AI tools used by employees.
At the same time, concern about that reliance is widespread. Four in five (80%) of respondents in Ireland expressed at least moderate concern about dependence on foreign owned AI tech, including nearly one third (32%) said they are very or extremely concerned. 68% are highly concerned about using proprietary or sensitive data in AI models. 66% said data privacy/security are the AI risks they are most concerned about, followed by legal, IP or regulatory compliance (64%) and workforce impact (42%).
The findings suggest that while Ireland remains deeply integrated into global AI ecosystems, a natural position for a small open economy, business leaders are increasingly alert to questions on jurisdiction, regulatory exposure and geopolitical resilience.
Beyond pilots
Globally the research indicates organisations are moving decisively beyond pilots and experimentation into enterprise-wide deployment. Workforce access to sanctioned AI tools has grown from fewer than 40% of employees to around 60% today, as AI becomes a core business capability.
In Ireland, 92% expect AI investment to increase next fiscal year, and 68% say their organisation has upgraded IT infrastructure.
Agentic AI
Unlike generative AI which produces content like text, images or code, Agentic AI is designed to take action and carry out tasks across systems with limited human intervention.
Globally, 85% of organisations expect to customise AI agents to suit specific business needs.
In Ireland, Agentic AI is mostly in limited rollout today but Deloitte’s survey found that four in ten Irish organisations expect it to be widespread or core to operations in two years.
