Law & Regulation News
- Company directors’ principal duties and obligations of particular relevance in this context,
- The considerable risks associated with accepting such appointments, and
- Some of the basic steps that any member of the public should take before deciding to accept an unsolicited offer to become a company director.
Recently the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail Neal Richmond TD and minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Dara Calleary TD launched Ireland’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Standards & Assurance Roadmap.
This roadmap is a key deliverable of Ireland’s National AI Strategy to develop and utilise Artificial Intelligence for the benefit of Irish society and our economy. The roadmap is firmly rooted in supporting Ireland’s implementation of the EU AI Act, which is fundamental to the future of AI within Ireland, across the EU and indeed globally. The roadmap was developed as a result of the Top Team on Standards in AI engagement process.
A significant step in ensuring that Ireland is at the forefront of change, the aim of the roadmap is to support Irish enterprises and organisations in embracing AI safely and ethically, through utilising AI standards that are published and in development. Standardisation is also key to support the new EU-wide AI regulatory framework to deliver the accountability and trust needed to ensure commercial and societal acceptance of AI.
The Top Team on Standards for AI process, let by NSAI, involved collaborative engagement with leading AI experts from across the Irish AI community, including industry, academia, civil society, the private and public sectors. The roadmap sets out a number of actions to support implementation of the Standards and Assurance aspects of the EU AI Act, ensuring that Ireland can safely unlock the potential that AI can provide.
The reporting measures aim to increase transparency and identify areas, where pay gaps persist, promoting equal pay for equal work. The snapshot date of June 2023 means that Employers must choose a date this month to analyse their pay data to identify any gender pay gaps and take appropriate measures to address the imbalances.
The Act expands the scope to include firms with 150 or more employees in 2024 or more employees in 2025.
The reporting period is a 12-month period immediately preceding and including the snapshot date. For example, if an employer has chosen 20th June 2023 as its snapshot date, its reporting deadline will be 20th December 2023 and the reporting period is 21st June 2022 to 20th June 2023.
71% of companies disclosed a pay gap above 5%
48% of companies disclosed a pay gap above the national average
82% of companies disclosed a bonus gap in favour of males