Technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence (AI), have the potential to contribute to sustainability by enabling the development of innovative customer service solutions for example, and supporting the transition to more sustainable economic practices including improved resource allocation and reduced waste.
However, despite the potential benefits, technological advancements could generate negative environmental and social impacts such as increased energy consumption and potentially increased greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the energy sources used. Technological change may also have impacts on labour markets. CSO will continue to monitor and report on developments and trends in these fields.
The extent of digitalisation among Irish enterprises has increased in recent years across a range of areas including Internet Access, Data Analytics, Cloud Computing and AI, with larger (250+ persons engaged) firms being stronger adopters of new technology than smaller enterprises.
This chapter shows how:
Data on digitalisation among Irish businesses is reported in the CSO, Information Society Statistics - Enterprises releases.
Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems that use technologies such as text mining, machine learning, or deep learning to gather or use data to predict, recommend or make decisions, with varying levels of autonomy. Examples of AI include chatbots, facial recognition, and autonomous robots.
In 2025, 20.2% of all enterprises indicated that they used AI technologies in some capacity, up from 8.1% in 2023. Large enterprises (57.7%) were significantly more likely to have used AI technology, compared with medium (28.6%) and small (17.2%) sized enterprises. See Figure 4.1 and Table 4.1.
AI for data mining (10.8%) was the most common AI technology used among businesses in Ireland, followed by AI use for natural language generation (9.3%) and for automating workflows or assisting in decision making (6.2%). Use of AI for data mining was the most common AI technology used by enterprises in each size class (small, medium, and large). See Figure 4.2 and Table 4.2.
Business administrative processes (7.8%) was the most common purpose for which enterprises used AI technology. See Figure 4.3 and Table 4.3.
Adoption of AI by enterprises in Ireland is on par with EU average (20.0%), but significantly behind the EU leaders Denmark (42.0%) and Finland (37.8%). See Figure 4.9 and Table 4.8 below.
In 2025, almost six in ten (58.6%) large enterprises (250 or more people employed) had broadband speed of at least 500 Mbps, compared with 44.6% of medium enterprises (50 to 249 people employed) and 35.4% of small enterprises (10 to 49 people employed).
Between 2023 and 2025 the proportion of enterprises with broadband speed of 500 Mbps or more increased from 30.8% to 37.5%
Of small enterprises, 15.4% had no fixed broadband in 2025, compared with 9.0% of medium enterprises and 6.9% of large enterprises. See Figure 4.4, Figure 4.5 and Table 4.4.
Enterprises use data in various ways to support and enhance business processes.
In 2025, more than one-third (34.7%) of enterprises used Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, 28.4% used Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, and 26.5% used Business Intelligence (BI) software.
Among large enterprises, 78.7% of enterprises used ERP software, 66.0% used CRM software, and 75.5% used BI software. For medium sized enterprises, 57.3% used ERP software, 50.2% used CRM software, and 47.0% used BI software. Among small enterprises 29.2% of enterprises used ERP software, 23.3% use CRM software, and 21.2% used BI software. See Figure 4.6 and Table 4.5.
In 2025, 28.2% of enterprises performed data analytics using transaction records, while 22.6% used customer information (e.g. purchasing information), 12.7% used social media, and 12.2% used web data (e.g. web scraping). Geolocation data of mobile devices or vehicles was used by 7.2% of enterprises, while 5.6% used smart devices or sensors, 4.1% used government open data, and 1.9% used satellite data.
The proportion of enterprises performing data analytics using transaction records increased from 23.0% in 2023 to 28.2% in 2025. See Figure 4.7 and Table 4.6.
Cloud computing is on-demand access, via the internet, to computing resources such as software and data storage.
The most popular type of cloud computing service in 2025 was e-mail with 64.2% of enterprises availing of this service, followed by cloud computing for office software (58.1%). Other types of cloud computing software purchased by enterprises in 2025 was finance or accounting software (52.9%), storage of files (51.8%), and security software (42.6%). See Figure 4.8 and Table 4.7.
Almost three quarters (73%) of Irish enterprises used paid cloud computing services, such as email, software or data storage, in 2025, the fourth highest among EU member states, behind Finland (79%), Italy (76%) and Malta (75%). See Figure 4.9 and Table 4.8.
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