The Agency Most Irish Businesses Haven't Fully Used Yet
Skillnet Ireland has been operating since 1999, co-funded by the Irish government's National Training Fund and the European Union through the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. Over that time it has grown from a modest cluster of business networks into the national workforce development agency, operating 68 Skillnet Business Networks and a set of national initiatives that together provide subsidised and co-funded upskilling programmes to private sector and commercial semi-state businesses across every county and sector in Ireland.
The 2025 Skillnet Ireland Annual Report, published in July 2026, puts the scale of the operation in concrete numbers: in 2025, more than 23,000 businesses engaged with Skillnet Ireland programmes, with 84,515 workers receiving training at a combined investment of €74 million — of which businesses contributed €26.5 million, representing 36% of the total cost. The agency delivered training across every region, with the vast majority — over 90% in most regions surveyed — of participating companies being SMEs. Those figures make Skillnet Ireland one of the most significant publicly funded business supports in Ireland that many business owners have either not used or underused.
In 2026, the organisation's strategic direction has sharpened considerably around a single priority that is reshaping every sector of the Irish economy: artificial intelligence. Its new three-year strategy, "Empowering Enterprise 2026-2028: A Strategy for Next Generation Capability," launched in March 2026, explicitly frames AI as one of the three defining forces — alongside digitalisation and sustainability — that Irish businesses must engage with to remain competitive. The target set in the strategy is ambitious: support 100,000 businesses over the course of the three years to 2028, including 15,000 businesses engaging with Skillnet Ireland for the first time and 1,000 start-ups and scale-ups focused on innovation capability.
Why AI Integration Is Now the Central Skills Challenge
The case for AI upskilling among Irish businesses does not rest on speculation. Accenture's Generating Impact report, published in May 2026, confirmed that 94% of Irish business leaders plan to increase AI investment this year. Daily use of generative AI tools among Irish employees has risen to 22%, up from 8% in 2024. But the same research found that only 29% of employees say a major process in their team has been redesigned around AI in the past year, and only 17% strongly agree that their organisation's leadership has clearly communicated how AI will affect their roles and required skills. The productivity gains that AI investment should generate are not flowing at scale because the workforce capability and process redesign that turns tools into transformation has not kept pace with the spending.
That gap — between AI investment and AI impact — is exactly the problem Skillnet Ireland's network is structured to address. The challenge for most Irish businesses, particularly SMEs, is not an absence of awareness about AI but an absence of structured, affordable, business-relevant pathways to building genuine capability. Off-the-shelf online courses and generic training programmes exist in abundance. What Skillnet Ireland offers that those cannot is co-funded, sector-specific, enterprise-led programming designed around what businesses in a particular sector or region actually need, delivered at subsidised cost, with the practical application of the learning to real business problems built into the structure of the training.
The Business Networks Driving AI Integration
Skillnet Ireland operates through 68 Business Networks, each one a cluster of companies in a particular sector or region that collaborate on identifying and addressing shared skills needs. Several of these networks have developed specific AI programmes that are directly relevant to Irish businesses in 2026.
Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet is one of the most active. Its Certificate in Foundations of Artificial Intelligence — delivered in partnership with TU Dublin and reaching capacity in its April 2026 iteration — covers the fundamentals of AI and its applications for working professionals who do not necessarily have a technical background. The course runs at a subsidised fee of €999 for eligible applicants, compared to a full programme fee of €2,224, with the difference covered by the Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet grant. The network also offers courses in AI and data analytics, machine learning, and AI strategy at postgraduate certificate and Master's degree level, in partnership with the University of Limerick, University of Galway, Krisolis and the National College of Ireland.
itag Skillnet, which serves technology companies across Ireland's west and north-west through the AtlanTec corridor, has developed a Postgraduate Certificate in AI for Professionals in partnership with the University of Galway. The network has been working with companies like Storm Technology — the Microsoft solutions partner — on the specific challenge of how to introduce AI across every function of a business, not just in isolated use cases. Storm Technology CEO Karl Flannery described the practical dimension of that work: "We looked at how we would introduce AI into every function within the business" — a framing that reflects what genuine AI integration looks like, as opposed to deploying an AI tool in one department while leaving everything else unchanged.
Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet has delivered GenAI Masterclasses for senior business leaders, developed in collaboration with London Business School, specifically designed for executive-level participants. The format brings senior leaders from across Irish industry together to examine the strategic implementation of AI — not the technical mechanics but the leadership decisions, cultural shifts and workforce implications that determine whether AI investment generates business value or remains a pilot project that never scales. Attendees at recent sessions have included senior executives from Pfizer, Zurich, FINEOS, Davy, Stats Perform and Munich Re Group. The network's director, Máire Hunt, has articulated the challenge precisely: "Our goal is to bridge the gap between recognising AI's potential and actually implementing it effectively. That means organisations need to have the right skills, capabilities and strategies to realise business value in terms of innovation, productivity and speed."
BioPharmaChem Skillnet, which serves Ireland's pharmaceutical and life sciences sector, offers the UCD Professional Academy Diploma in AI for Business at a member rate of €760, down from a full fee of €1,995 — making a UCD-accredited, practically focused AI qualification accessible to professionals in one of Ireland's most economically significant sectors at a cost most training budgets can sustain. Industry 4.0 Skillnet offers a parallel Professional Academy Diploma in AI for Business specifically for manufacturing and engineering sector participants.
Positive2Work Skillnet launched a Summer 2026 training schedule in June including a specific AI Productivity programme running through June and July, providing practical guidance on leveraging AI tools to enhance efficiency, support decision-making and increase productivity in the workplace — exactly the applied, in-work-context training that bridges the gap between awareness and actual changed behaviour on the job.
The Digital4Business Initiative: EU-Funded AI Access
Running alongside the Business Network programmes, Skillnet Ireland's Digital4Business initiative, co-funded by the European Union, provides further subsidised access to AI and digital skills development specifically for businesses that may not yet be engaged with a Business Network. The initiative's AI Ready platform offers free, bite-sized AI learning designed for employees at all levels — not technical training but the kind of foundational AI literacy that enables someone to start using AI tools confidently in their daily work, which is the prerequisite for everything more advanced that follows.
The Skillnet Ireland website's Ireland's Talent Landscape 2025 report, based on a survey of 500 Irish business leaders, found that 76% of businesses upskilled their staff in the past 12 months — a high baseline that reflects genuine commitment to workforce development across the Irish business community. But 34% of business leaders reported a lack of availability of supports relative to their stage of business development, and 46% of business leaders reported undertaking upskilling and mentoring support themselves, down from 49% in 2024 — a signal that the most time-pressured people in any business, those running it, are the ones least likely to prioritise their own AI development despite having the most to gain from it.
The Three-Year Strategy: What "Empowering Enterprise 2026-2028" Sets Out to Do
The launch of Skillnet Ireland's "Empowering Enterprise 2026-2028" strategy in March 2026 under Minister James Lawless set a clear and measurable agenda for the next three years. The strategy explicitly names AI, digitalisation and sustainability as the three areas where Irish business capability most urgently needs to develop, and it commits to a significant expansion in the number of businesses Skillnet Ireland reaches — 100,000 over three years, with 15,000 new businesses and 1,000 start-ups and scale-ups as specific targets within that total.
Minister Lawless described the strategic direction directly: "This new strategy further strengthens the organisation's enterprise-led model by advancing high-impact skills programmes and responding to emerging business needs in areas such as digitalisation, artificial intelligence, and green technologies." Mark Jordan, CEO of Skillnet Ireland, has framed the urgency around competitiveness: the agency's role is not simply to provide training but to ensure that Irish businesses can adapt and compete as the economic environment shifts beneath them.
For Irish SMEs — which make up more than 99% of businesses in Ireland and account for nearly 70% of private sector employment — the practical implication of Skillnet Ireland's AI focus is straightforward. A subsidised, sector-relevant, enterprise-led AI upskilling programme delivered through a Business Network costs a fraction of what equivalent training would cost procured independently, applies directly to the sector's specific challenges rather than generic AI theory, and is structured to build practical capability that translates to changed behaviour at work rather than completed certificates that sit in drawers.
The Bottom Line
Skillnet Ireland's 2025 Annual Report confirmed 84,515 workers trained across 23,000 businesses at a combined investment of €74 million — and its 2026-2028 strategy has placed AI integration at the centre of what the agency does next. For Irish SMEs navigating the pressure to adopt AI without the internal expertise or budget to do it well, Skillnet Ireland's network of 68 Business Networks and national initiatives represents the most accessible, most affordable and most practically structured route to genuine AI capability. The funding is there. The programmes are live. The window is now.