Wexford County Council reluctant to embrace AI tech due to fears over personal data breaches

By Simon Bourke, Wexford People

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widespread in the workplace and businesses across the country seek ways to integrate it into their operations, Wexford County Council (WCC) is remaining cautious about how it utilises this form of modern technology.

At the October meeting of WCC, Councillor Leonard Kelly asked whether staff at County Hall were being encouraged to use AI in their jobs.

“Is there anything that can be used from an AI perspective that would assist the staff in their jobs in WCC?” he asked. “If we had AI it might not take a month or several months to get a response to queries and would assist the executive in the job its doing.”

In response, director of services Lynda Lacey advised that the council was currently using a limited version of the Microsoft app, Copilot, but that it was treading carefully in how it shared its data.

“There’s a huge cost involved in increasing our licensing of it,” she said. “We are developing our own internal policies and procedures because we have a lot of personal data and we have to be cautious on how we proceed as a result.”