One in Five Irish Businesses Now Uses Artificial Intelligence, According to Fresh CSO Data
The Central Statistics Office published its Information Society Statistics – Enterprises (ISSE) 2025 report this week, and the headline figure confirms what many in the technology sector expected: artificial intelligence has crossed the 20 per cent adoption threshold among Irish enterprises. That figure stood at just 15 per cent twelve months earlier, which means AI usage across Irish businesses grew by roughly one-third in a single calendar year.
The number is significant for several reasons, but the most important one is context. A separate report published in March 2025 by Trinity Business School and Microsoft Ireland claimed that 91 per cent of Irish businesses were using some form of AI, nearly doubling from 49 per cent in 2024. The gap between that figure and the CSO’s 20 per cent is enormous, and understanding why it exists tells you more about the actual state of AI adoption in Ireland than either number does on its own.
The Trinity-Microsoft study surveyed 300 senior leaders and asked broadly about any form of AI usage, including employees using free tools like ChatGPT without formal organisational approval. The CSO survey measures structured, intentional deployment of AI technologies within business operations. These are fundamentally different things. The first captures awareness and experimentation; the second captures integration. Ireland appears to be a country where most business leaders have encountered AI in some capacity, but only one in five companies has embedded it into actual workflows, processes, or decision-making systems in a meaningful and measurable way.
The Size Gap: Large Enterprises at 58%, Small Businesses at 17%
The most striking pattern in the CSO data is the scale of the divide between large and small enterprises when it comes to AI adoption. Among large businesses in Ireland, 58 per cent reported using artificial intelligence in 2025. Among small enterprises, that figure drops to just 17 per cent – a gap of 41 percentage points that raises serious questions about whether smaller Irish firms risk falling behind permanently in the digital transition.
This gap is not unique to Ireland, but the CSO figures allow a precise measurement of its scale within the Irish economy. Large enterprises have dedicated IT departments, budgets allocated for digital transformation, and access to skilled personnel who can evaluate, implement, and manage AI systems. Small businesses typically lack all three of these resources, which explains why their adoption rate sits at roughly one-third of the large-enterprise figure.
The practical consequences of this divide are worth spelling out. A large enterprise using AI for data mining, workflow automation, and decision support is extracting value from its existing data assets in ways that a competitor relying on manual processes simply cannot match over time. The cost advantages compound with each quarter of use, meaning the gap between AI-adopting and non-adopting firms is likely to widen rather than narrow unless intervention or accessible tooling changes the equation for smaller players.
What Irish Businesses Actually Use AI For: Data Mining Leads, Not Chatbots
The CSO breakdown of AI types in use across Irish enterprises provides a corrective to the popular assumption that most business AI adoption centres on chatbots and text generation. The data tells a different story.
Data mining was the most commonly reported AI application across all enterprise sizes in 2025, used by 11 per cent of Irish businesses. Natural language generation – the category that includes tools like ChatGPT, automated content creation, and text summarisation – came second at 9 per cent. Automating workflows or assisting in decision-making placed third, though the overall figure for this category across all enterprises was notably lower at approximately 6 per cent.
Among large enterprises specifically, the pattern shifts. Data mining remains dominant at 35 per cent, but workflow automation and decision support rises to 29 per cent – nearly five times the rate seen across the general enterprise population. This suggests that larger organisations are moving beyond the initial exploratory phase of AI adoption into operational integration, while smaller firms remain concentrated in the earlier stages of usage where data analysis is the primary application.
The Irish Times noted in its analysis of the CSO release that workflow automation ranking third – rather than first – challenges the narrative that AI is primarily a tool for replacing or streamlining human processes. In Ireland at least, businesses are using AI more often to understand their existing data than to change how work gets done.
Table: AI Adoption in Ireland by Enterprise Size and Application Type (CSO 2025)
| AI Application | All Enterprises | Large Enterprises | Small Enterprises |
| Any AI usage | 20% | 58% | 17% |
| Data mining | 11% | 35% | Not separately reported |
| Natural language generation | 9% | Not separately reported | Not separately reported |
| Workflow automation / decision support | ~6% | 29% | Not separately reported |
Beyond AI: The Broader Digital Infrastructure Picture for Irish Business
The ISSE 2025 report covers far more than artificial intelligence, and the surrounding data on cloud computing, broadband speeds, e-commerce, and data analytics provides essential context for understanding how digitally prepared Irish businesses are as a whole.
Cloud-based email usage reached 64 per cent of enterprises in 2025, up from 52 per cent just two years earlier in 2023. That 12-percentage-point increase in two years represents a faster rate of adoption than AI itself, and it reflects how deeply cloud infrastructure has embedded itself into routine business operations across all sectors and company sizes.
Enterprise Resource Planning software was used by 35 per cent of businesses, Customer Relationship Management platforms by 28 per cent, and Business Intelligence tools by 27 per cent. These three categories form the operational backbone of data-driven business management, and their combined adoption rates suggest that roughly one-third of Irish enterprises now operate with structured digital systems for managing resources, customer interactions, and internal analytics.
Data analytics usage showed meaningful growth as well. In 2025, 28 per cent of enterprises performed data analytics using transaction records, up from 23 per cent in 2023. Customer information analytics – covering location data, preferences, and reviews – reached 23 per cent, up from 20 per cent over the same period. These increments are modest individually, but they indicate a consistent upward trend in how Irish businesses extract insight from the data they already collect through routine operations.
Broadband infrastructure remains uneven. While 38 per cent of enterprises enjoyed speeds above 500 Mbps and 59 per cent of large enterprises had access to these faster connections, 22 per cent of all businesses still operated with broadband speeds below 100 Mbps. For context, reliable use of cloud-based AI tools, video conferencing at scale, and real-time data analytics all benefit from speeds above 100 Mbps, meaning roughly one in five Irish businesses faces a basic infrastructure constraint on digital adoption before any question of software, skills, or strategy enters the discussion.
Websites, E-Commerce, and the Digital Presence Gap
The CSO data also reveals how Irish businesses present themselves online and whether their digital presence extends beyond a static website into functional commerce and recruitment tools. In 2025, 67 per cent of enterprises listed information about their goods, services, or prices on their website – a solid majority, but one that implies a third of Irish businesses either lack a website entirely or maintain one without core commercial information visible to potential customers.
Online ordering, reservation, or booking functionality was available on 29 per cent of enterprise websites, and 22 per cent featured job advertisements or online application forms. These figures matter because they indicate how many businesses have moved beyond informational web presence into transactional capability – the stage where a website generates revenue or reduces operational costs rather than simply existing as a digital brochure.
Sustainability and ICT: A Quieter Trend With Long-Term Significance
One section of the ISSE 2025 release that received relatively little media attention concerns the intersection of information technology and sustainability. More than a quarter of Irish enterprises – 27 per cent – reported using ICT systems or solutions specifically to reduce energy consumption in 2025. A further 18 per cent used digital tools to reduce materials usage or to enhance the incorporation of recycled materials into their operations.
These figures matter because they demonstrate that digital adoption in Irish business is not confined to productivity and profit optimisation. A meaningful minority of enterprises are already deploying technology for environmental objectives, and as regulatory pressure around carbon reporting and circular economy compliance increases across the European Union, this category of ICT usage is likely to grow faster than most other segments in the coming years.
The Two Irelands of AI: What the Numbers Really Mean
The most useful way to interpret the CSO data is not as a single headline about 20 per cent adoption but as evidence of two distinct Irelands operating at very different speeds of digital transformation.
The first Ireland consists of large enterprises – often multinational subsidiaries, major financial institutions, and technology companies – where AI adoption has reached 58 per cent, broadband speeds exceed 500 Mbps, and data analytics is a routine part of business intelligence. These organisations have the resources, the personnel, and the strategic frameworks to integrate AI progressively across departments and extract compounding value from each stage of deployment.
The second Ireland consists of small and medium enterprises that form the backbone of the domestic economy, where AI adoption sits at 17 per cent, broadband speeds frequently fall below 100 Mbps, and digital strategy often takes a back seat to immediate operational pressures. For these businesses, AI is not a strategic priority – it is something they are aware of but have not yet found a practical, affordable, and low-risk way to implement.
The CSO report by its nature does not make policy recommendations, but the data it presents makes the underlying challenge visible. Ireland’s National AI Strategy, updated with a focus on advancing responsible AI adoption, and the appointment of the country’s first Minister for Artificial Intelligence in January 2025 both signal governmental awareness of the gap. Whether policy intervention can close a 41-percentage-point divide between large and small enterprise adoption before it becomes structurally permanent is the question that will define the next phase of Ireland’s digital economy.
Table: Digital Adoption Snapshot – Irish Enterprises in 2025 (CSO ISSE Data)
| Indicator | 2023 | 2025 | Change |
| AI usage (all enterprises) | ~15% (2024) | 20% | +5 pp year-on-year |
| Cloud-based email | 52% | 64% | +12 pp over two years |
| Data analytics (transaction records) | 23% | 28% | +5 pp over two years |
| Data analytics (customer information) | 20% | 23% | +3 pp over two years |
| Broadband above 500 Mbps | Not reported | 38% | – |
| ERP software usage | Not reported | 35% | – |
| CRM software usage | Not reported | 28% | – |
| ICT for energy reduction | Not reported | 27% | – |
| Online ordering on website | Not reported | 29% | – |
What Comes Next: The Gap Between Experimentation and Integration
Devin Zibulsky, statistician in the Sustainability and Circular Economy Division at the CSO, described the ISSE 2025 results as showing the extent of digitalisation among Irish businesses, noting that the survey gives a broad picture of how ICT is used in business practices across areas including internet access, e-commerce, data analytics, cloud computing, and AI.
The phrase “extent of digitalisation” is carefully chosen and worth pausing on. It does not suggest that Irish businesses have completed a digital transition – it describes a process that is underway, measured at a specific point in time, with significant variation between sectors, regions, and enterprise sizes. The 20 per cent AI adoption figure is not an endpoint but a waypoint, and the direction and speed of travel from here will depend on factors that range from broadband infrastructure investment to AI skills training for small business owners to the regulatory framework established by the EU AI Act, which takes full effect in August 2026.
Ireland has genuine advantages in this race – a strong technology sector, a well-educated workforce, proximity to major multinational AI developers, and governmental structures that have begun to treat artificial intelligence as a policy priority. Whether those advantages translate into broad-based adoption that reaches beyond the large-enterprise segment and into the small-business economy that employs the majority of Irish workers is the open question that the next round of CSO data will begin to answer.
