Trinity College Dublin and Microsoft find widening AI skills gap between Irish SMEs and large firms

The AI Economy Ireland 2026 report reveals that 92 percent of organizations now use or plan to use AI, but fewer than half have a formal policy, and an 18-point confidence gap between men and women persists across the workforce.

Trinity College Dublin and Microsoft Ireland have published the AI Economy Ireland 2026 report showing a widening AI maturity gap between SMEs and large organizations.

Trinity College Dublin and Microsoft Ireland have published research showing a widening AI maturity gap between small and medium-sized enterprises and large organizations in Ireland.

The AI Economy Ireland 2026 report, the third in an annual series, finds that while AI adoption is now near-universal at 92 percent, just ten percent of leaders describe their deployment as advanced or frontier-level, and SMEs remain concentrated at the early stages.

The stakes are significant. SMEs account for more than two-thirds of all employment in Ireland and contribute over 40 percent of gross value added. Large organizations are more than twice as likely as SMEs to deliver weekly time savings of two hours or more per employee (54 percent versus 25 percent), and SMEs are more than twice as likely to have no formal AI training in place (15 percent versus six percent).

The report does find that where SMEs invest, the returns are real. SMEs that commit to AI are more likely to report significant productivity gains than large organizations (18 percent versus eight percent). But too few are making that investment.

Time savings are already measurable

A typical mid-sized organization in Ireland is freeing up to 1,000 hours a month through everyday AI use, driven by reduced time on meetings, email, and routine administrative tasks. For large multinational operations, the figure rises to up to 5,000 hours per month.

Seven in ten leaders report a reduction in overall workload pressure, with one in three saying AI is making it easier to switch off from work. A further 26 percent report reduced evening or weekend work.

Catherine Doyle, General Manager of Microsoft Ireland, says: "AI is already delivering real value for Irish organisations, freeing up thousands of hours a month. The opportunity now is to make sure the benefits are felt equally. That means closing confidence gaps wherever they exist and supporting SMEs to scale from early adoption to full integration. That's where the next wave of value will come from."

Gender confidence gap and policy readiness

The report flags a persistent gender divide. Seventy percent of women versus 52 percent of men hesitate to use AI at work, an 18-point confidence gap that mirrors lower self-reported AI literacy among women.

On governance, fewer than half of organizations (44 percent) have a formal AI policy. This matters because organizations with a formal policy are ten times more likely to report major productivity gains (30 percent versus three percent). The finding takes on added urgency with further EU AI Act provisions due to take effect on August 2, 2026.

Professor Ashish Kumar Jha of the ADAPT Centre at Trinity College Dublin says: "The competitive advantage will come from how quickly organisations move from early deployment to scaled, governed, and value-driven AI adoption. The levers are clear: organisations with a formal AI policy are ten times more likely to report major productivity gains, and SMEs that do invest in AI capability report higher rates of significant productivity gains than large firms."

The research was conducted across 250 organizations, with survey fieldwork carried out by 3GEM from December 2025 to January 2026. Doyle adds that the next step is "using AI not just to do today's work faster, but to build new products, enter new markets and create value we couldn't create before."