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Irish Examiner
4 days ago
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Manufacturers need to invest in AI or risk falling behind, PwC advises
Irish-based manufacturers need to accelerate their adoption of AI tools to avoid being left behind Europe, Middle East and Africa, experts at PwC have advised. Just 3% of Irish manufacturing companies have fully integrated AI into their operations versus 8% for EMEA companies. While the gap cited in PwC's report 'AI in Operations — Revolutionising the manufacturing industry' isn't huge, Irish firms are being urged to act now and not let it widen. Áine Brassill, operations transformation partner, PwC Ireland, takes heart from the survey findings that there is a lot of AI innovation and piloting going on, with many Irish firms clearly looking to catch up. 'Around 70% of Irish respondents are piloting and scaling up their AI projects compared to 55% for EMEA counterparts. We can, therefore expect a surge in widespread AI implementation in Irish manufacturing in the years to come,' said Áine. 'While the initial focus regarding AI implementation is on operational and productivity improvements, the real interest lies in the potential to disrupt and fundamentally reinvent existing business models. AI agents will make the ability for AI systems to autonomously perform tasks a reality, enabling decision making and delivering real competitive differentiation. 'However, building trust in AI will be critical for customers, regulators and employees. Companies need to be confident in the integrity of solutions that will drive safe and secure AI outcomes. Taking a responsible approach, including upskilling employees, will be critical to getting the most from AI alongside confirming future compliance with regulators and the EU AI Act.' Áine Brassill, operations transformation partner, PwC Ireland. The report found that both Irish and EMEA manufacturers believe in AI's potential to increase profitability. Irish operations, however, are less optimistic than their EMEA counterparts as regards their belief in what AI can deliver. Some 73% of Irish manufacturing operations expect AI to increase profitability by 2030 versus 84% of EMEA respondents. Just 26% of Irish respondents expect AI to increase profit margins by at least 6% by 2030, trailing the 40% of EMEA manufacturers. The report features 400 manufacturing operations' executives in over 30 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa, including Ireland. In Ireland, 43% of respondents were in pharma/life science and med-tech multinational operations with the balance in retail and consumer and industrial products. AI in Ireland is also maturing relatively slowly. Some 29% of Irish respondents reported no business benefits as yet from AI versus 14% for the EMEA. Just 4% of Irish and EMEA manufacturers have already enjoyed financial benefits and return on investment from AI. A further 11% report that they have received measurable financial benefits (EMEA: 13%). Irish manufacturing operations are also investing less in AI initiatives than their EMEA counterparts. In the last five years, 32% of Irish manufacturing operations invested less than €1m in AI initiatives (EMEA: 29%). 15% invested in excess of €6 million compared to 41% for their EMEA counterparts. In both Ireland and EMEA, progress is slow on AI. Just 3% of Irish manufacturing companies have fully integrated AI into their operations compared to 8% for EMEA companies. At the same time, there is a lot of AI innovation and piloting going on with many Irish firms clearly looking to catch up: 70% of Irish respondents are piloting and scaling up their AI projects compared to 55% for EMEA counterparts. We can therefore expect a surge in widespread AI implementation in Irish manufacturing in the years to come. Gary Hanniffy, director of manufacturing, PwC Ireland, said: 'Like many businesses, the manufacturing industry is facing significant uncertainty stemming from geopolitical disruption, economic fragmentation, supply chain volatility, tightening regulation, climate change, technology transformation and increasing costs. 'AI offers a real opportunity for business model reinvention for manufacturing operations and our study shows that the potential benefits from AI will justify the effort. The survey suggests that manufacturing operations can become more competitive as a result of full-scale AI adoption. 'The survey highlights that a majority of Irish manufacturing operations, consisting largely of pharma, life sciences and med-tech multinational companies, are piloting AI initiatives rather than having moved to scaling and integrating the technology right across their business operations while EMEA companies are more advanced in their implementation journey. 'At the same time, they do have high expectations for realising the benefits from AI in terms of profitability and other financial benefits,' Gary added. 'Getting to the next level requires investment and results here are mixed, with some companies planning significant investment levels, others are not yet ready to commit. In Ireland, in particular, more investment in AI is also needed to keep up with EMEA peers.' Read More Business movers: People starting new jobs in Ireland The survey highlights a number of key challenges for successful AI implementation. These include: data quality; IT & data security; reliability of AI-generated content and data availability. Gary Hanniffy said: 'Strong organisational structures and processes are essential for steering and delivering a successful AI strategy and to enable safe and secure outcomes. Those manufacturing organisations who have integrated and scaled up their AI projects are using an organisational governance model that involves a central AI team (Ireland: 100%; EMEA: 71%). 'On the other hand, the majority of those organisations that have just started piloting AI lack coordinated governance and are using non-centralised organisational structures (Ireland: 76%; EMEA: 58%). This finding is in line with PwC's earlier 2025 GenAI Business Leaders survey, indicating that more work needs to be done on AI trust and governance such as building appropriate governance structures.'
Irish Independent
31-05-2025
- General
- Irish Independent
Tríocha bliain ag foghlaim trí Ghaeilge – Gaelscoil Charman marks major milestone
With this school year marking thirty years since the Gaelscoil first opened its doors in Wexford town, the red carpet was rolled out and the community was invited to come and help pupils, staff and management to mark the milestone. While a sports day at Pairc Charman was supposed to form part of the celebrations, the weather failed to play ball, but things were quickly re-arranged and pupils showed off some of their musical talents as príomhoide Dearbhla Mhic Chaoilte thanked the local community and pupils and parents, past and present, for all their support over the years and cut a special 'birthday cake' with the help of the school's oldest and youngest pupils. On foot of a local demand, the first tentative steps to establish a Gaelscoil in Wexford town were taken back in 1994. Initially, the school opened with just 37 pupils, under the leadership of príomhoide Áine Uí Ghionnáin, and it didn't receive permanent recognition from the Department of Education until 1997. Twenty years ago, in 2005, Gaelscoil Charman received its permanent building on Whiterock Hill and it was a momentous day for Áine and her staff. In 2021, Áine retired from her role and was succeeded by Dearbhla Mhic Chaoilte. From it's humble beginnings, the Gaelscoil has gone from strength to strength and today it has over 200 pupils with eight mainstream classes and one ASD class. Indeed it was a huge source of pride when Gaelscoil Charman became one of the first Gaelscoileanna in the south east to open an ASD class and to offer education completely trí Ghaeilge. "Gaelscoil Gharman is proud of its inclusivity and welcomes all families of many different backgrounds,' Príomhoide Mhic Chaoilte said. 'The school community as a whole is united in its love of the Irish language and culture and is very proud to be able to pass on this love to its pupils.'
Hamilton Spectator
01-05-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
I went on a seven-day trek in Chilean Patagonia — spontaneously. It changed my life
One evening, in the southernmost Irish pub in the world, my life changed forever. It was the start of my first ever solo trip, and I had just arrived in Ushuaia, the leaping-off point for Antarctica, on the southern tip of Argentinian Patagonia. I had chosen South America partly because it was summer there, and I wanted a post-university escape from the depressing London weather. But that evening, covered in snow and wearing the battered winter coat I had packed at the last minute when my older brother informed me that Patagonia was, in fact, freezing this time of year, I realized my plan had gone awry. Feeling cold and directionless — both in my travels and my life — I dipped into the Dublin Pub, looking for inspiration. There, over pints of Guinness, I met two people who would change my life. First, I met Áine, a hilarious Irishwoman who regaled me with stories of her expeditions across the world. Then there was Brad, a stoic American wildfire-fighter, who recounted experiences of jumping out of helicopters into thick smoke to fell trees with a chainsaw, and bowhunting elk for his yearly meat. The pair could hardly have been more different, but they were both seasoned travellers who treated adventure as a way of life. Writer Joshua Korber Hoffman and fellow adventurer Áine during the penultimate day of their trek. I, on the other hand, was a born-and-raised Londoner who thought of the great outdoors as a mythical place. But hearing about Brad's recent trek through neighbouring Chilean Patagonia, I was enthralled. He had hiked for a week through cold and snow, over mountains and above glaciers, across lakes and through thick forest. He encouraged me to do the same — on the 'O' circuit in Torres del Paine National Park. This trek is considered one of the park's most demanding and spans approximately 120 kilometres. I would have to carry all my own food and equipment, and hope for the best. Recklessly, I booked it. Brad said I could do it, and I believed him. Áine, a stranger until two hours before this, said she would join me. Brad lent me his tent and sent us on our way. What followed was a seven-day trip that changed my perspective on the world. It was hard, but the rewards were spectacular. One day, while hiking over a mountain pass, we were caught in a blizzard, the snow up to our knees. But at the top of that mountain, the wind whipping against our faces, we saw Grey Glacier, the national park's largest and most impressive glacier, stretched out to the horizon below us — huge, jagged, inhospitable. After we descended a steep and muddy path, clinging onto ropes for dear life, the sky cleared and we saw the glacier's undulating mass in all its blue and white glory. Hikers climbing the John Gardner Crossing, a notoriously difficult mountain pass en route to Grey Glacier. The following day, a hiker sustained an exposed leg fracture on the same route, resulting in a two-day stay at a nearby encampment with only mild painkillers available, before being airlifted to Santiago. Luckily, we survived in one (rather achy) piece. There was little relief from discomfort even at night, due to Brad's tent being a 'bivvy' — essentially a body bag designed for extreme conditions on mountain ledges. I felt like a caterpillar inside a chrysalis with a dwindling oxygen supply. But I will never be able to replicate the feeling of unzipping it in the middle of the night and seeing Orion shining brightly directly above me, or emerging like a butterfly at dawn to a bright red sky. Through endless conversations with Áine over the seven days, and with the voice of Brad in my head, I was inspired to treat life less seriously, to be bolder and more spontaneous, and to view the post-university world as an opportunity rather than an intimidating void. After the trek, I threw away my winter coat, which had leaked one too many feathers despite the tape valiantly attempting to plug the holes, and I moved on to warmer climes. But the experience in Chilean Patagonia, and the people I met, stayed with me.
The Independent
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
This book brings the grim horrors of London's rental market to life
Houses were never left empty in this city,' observes Áine, the protagonist of Róisín Lanigan's debut novel I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There. Every potential London rental property, however dispiriting, seems to be snatched up in a panic moments after it is advertised. Usually, there is barely a day or so of grace period between the old tenants setting off in their rented vans, and the new ones arriving in theirs. So why, then, is the flat that Áine is viewing with her boyfriend Elliot eerily free from any sign of life? Why is it still on the market a fortnight after the listing appeared online? Why is the rent just about affordable, in this 'boujee' enclave of the capital, where stylish parents dress their equally stylish babies up like 'tiny Copenhagen-based fashion influencers'? There is something about the space that unnerves Áine; a sense of 'wrongness persisted despite the ticked boxes and the beautiful bay windows', Lanigan writes. Inevitably, though, the couple hand over the deposit and e-sign the contract. Yes, those bay windows are only single glazed but, as Elliot puts it, 'we're used to damp at this point, surely'. His words seem to sum up the bleak pragmatism of the serial renter, whose grim logic tends to go something along the lines of: we could do better, but we could certainly do worse. So many of us have lived out our own renting horror stories, experiences that are often deeply painful at the time, but eventually become a part of our personal mythologies, tales that we can later recount, often with a darkly funny spin, from a safe distance. The landlord with a habit of 'just popping in' unannounced, then proceeding to itemise every possible way you're ruining their glorious home. The upstairs neighbours who seem to rearrange their furniture every weeknight at approximately midnight, in bursts of insomniac feng shui. The rats that re-emerge from the pipes on a quarterly basis. The withheld deposits and the Kafka-esque email threads arguing with letting agents. As homeownership becomes an increasingly difficult, even fanciful prospect for younger millennials and Generation Z, the amount of time – and money – that we will spend renting seems to stretch out exponentially in front of us. Last year, the amount of rent paid annually by under 45s increased by £3.5bn, reaching a record total of £56.2bn. Against this backdrop, the various indignities and injustices that make up life as a tenant have provided rich material for some of the most memorable debut novels of the past few years. Oisín McKenna's Evenings and Weekends, released in 2024, follows a cluster of friends in their early thirties. Some of them are on the verge of being finally priced out of London after years of renting, while others see those would-be abandoners as somehow giving up – on their youth, on their friendships, on a hard-to-define sense of possibility that life in the capital has always promised. Jo Hamya's 2021 book Three Rooms was a brilliant evocation of what it's like to have your mental health slowly ground down by a house share situation, while another 2024 release, The Lodgers by Holly Pester, unpicks the disorientating experience of subletting, carving out your own life while surrounded by other people's things. Precarity is the prevailing mood in all of these stories. 'We're influenced by what we experience, and even in terms of where we sit down to write, housing and renting have inevitably become a major concern,' Lanigan recently told The i. ' Fiction being written in s***, damp flats that suck up all your money is never going to be bucolic.' What feels particularly striking about her debut, though, is the way that she leans into, well, the outright horror of it all. In I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There, Áine starts to experience her own nightmare rental as a Gothic novel, albeit one littered with the trappings of millennial life. At home, she begins to feel as if she's being watched, observed by an audience that is 'threatening. Almost malevolent.' Black mould starts to seep out from behind the basement door and splatter the walls of their living space. Wails emerge from the upstairs flat. Post doesn't arrive for weeks, then turns up all at once, on a Sunday. Fruit turns rotten and mushy within hours of being unpacked from the supermarket. Áine's recurrent cough comes back with a vengeance. In isolation, any one of these happenings might feel like a banal annoyance. But as they slowly accumulate, they start to leave Áine oppressed, disorientated and increasingly at odds with Elliot. Like so many young couples, they've leapt into cohabitation a little earlier than they might've liked in order to save money and avoid re-entering the fray of Spare Room; it's a decision catalysed by flatmates moving on and leases coming to an end. Moving in together only seems to have thrown the cracks and uncertainties in their relationship into stark relief. It doesn't help that Elliot is resolutely rational, while Áine has more of an affinity with supernatural stories, having grown up hearing family tales about banshees and the like. Even Laura, her best friend and former flatmate, takes Elliot's side when it comes to the potential haunting. 'I don't think you can get a Foxton's discount for demonic possession,' she says, dripping in snark. Lanigan has a knack for punctuating the lurking sense of dread with bursts of dark humour, which prevent Áine's Gothic nightmare from straying over into melodrama. The narration, too, is often enjoyably deadpan, which chimes perfectly with the futility of the renting cycle, such as when Áine ponders how she had 'never moved into a place that was clean, never left a place without cleaning it, and never received a deposit back without an extortionate cleaning fee deduction'. What Lanigan has lighted upon is that there is something inherently ghostly about the whole rental process. Every new home that we move into, once the last one has become unaffordable, is occupied by the spectres of tenants past, each with their own hidden history. Their old mail clutters up the letterbox, their old cutlery still knocking around in the drawers. They're even, in a way, lurking around in the air or the carpet: Áine becomes preoccupied with 'how dust was made of other people's skin, and it felt weird not knowing whose skin she was coughing up now'. Model tenants, those perfect renters you pretend to be when meeting with an agent for the first time, the ones who are clean and social but don't like to party, are expected to exist like ghosts, too – or at least to be somehow incorporeal, leaving a property unmarked, as if it has never been lived in by actual humans carrying out actual lives. So your bedroom is splattered with abstract flourishes of black mould? You're probably just breathing too much, in the house you pay to live in. Lanigan's characters receive a barrage of emails reminding them of everything they're doing wrong in their cursed property, as if cooking with a pan lid on can stop the supernatural spread of the damp. Which brings us to 'normal wear and tear' – a notoriously subjective term for most landlords. No wonder Áine cringes every time that Elliot bashes his work rucksack into the exact same spot on the wall, leaving a mark that, she fears, will eventually be factored into a hefty deduction from their deposit. She surreptitiously searches online for tips on how best to remove stains from magnolia paint. Of course their walls are magnolia – it's the universal shade of the soulless, liminal rental home. The very blankness and beigeness is a reminder of your lack of stake in this place, of your impermanence. That sense of impermanence, of never feeling at ease in the place that's ostensibly your safe haven, slowly causes Áine to fall apart. Her disintegration might be heightened, but it's horribly recognisable all the same. I Want To Go Home … might be a ghost story, yet it is also a visceral, sometimes unbearably realistic exploration of how renting can take a truly frightening psychological toll – scarier even than looking up property prices on Rightmove.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There by Róisín Lanigan review – a housing crisis ghost story
To a certain extent, all rented properties are haunted. The spectres of previous tenants lurk in the bedside tables and slogan mugs they left behind; their fag smoke lingers in the carpets; the post they failed to redirect piles up in the hall. Neighbours, too, can feel like phantoms: we might rarely see them, but we hear their footsteps and their music, inhale their cooking smells, or simply somehow sense their recently departed presences on the communal stairs. As for landlords: they're probably the biggest ghouls of all. In light of all this, it's perhaps surprising that we haven't seen more housing crisis ghost stories, or, as Róisín Lanigan's debut has been billed, a 'gothic novel for generation rent'. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There is the story of Áine and Elliot, who have just moved into a rental together in a gentrified area of London. It's a flat that, ominously, no one else seemed to want. They are both keen to enter a more adult stage of life, but something about the place unnerves Áine from the very start. It's a familiar premise, albeit given a fresh spin. Lanigan is a wry and witty observer of how it feels to live now, and some sentences are a delight ('she finished the fizz and put the tinsel in their recycling bin and thought about how long it would take before it disintegrated into the earth. A long time. Maybe never, actually'). She also knows her gothic tropes. Here we have a female protagonist whose instincts are telling her that something is off but, as is usual, her male partner dismisses her: 'he said the flat was just old, that it gave the flat character, that it was a silly thing to be scared of'. It's that old conundrum: ghost or mental illness? And so Áine starts to keep things from Elliot, retreating into herself as she becomes more and more afraid ('She knew not to tell him that it wasn't right, how quickly everything died here'). Lanigan creates a genuinely eerie sense of dread, and while she deploys some cliches, she does it in a tone verging on sarcastic: 'Frequently she opened her eyes to see a figure standing at the end of the wrought-iron bed, staring at her in the darkness, and she'd be frozen in fear for a few minutes until she realised it was only Elliot, probably.' There are places where I laughed out loud, such as when she describes her landlord as 'him, or her, the anonymous spectral gombeen that sucked up all of their capital'. As her use of 'gombeen' indicates, Lanigan is Irish, and her talent for exploring the cultural dislocation Áine feels makes this novel stand out. It manifests in all sorts of ways, from her friends being more frightened of death 'than was normal' because they haven't seen enough corpses, to relatives who put out bowls of salt for spirits. Hailing from a superstitious family myself, I loathed Elliot and how he mocks her parents for their genuinely scary banshee story. His scepticism isn't the problem, it's the classist, xenophobic way in which he deploys it that has you believing in our heroine. There is much to love about this book: its humour, its use of mould (there isn't enough mould in fiction) and its themes of inequality (Áine's childhood respiratory issues are relevant). It's a brilliant satire of London's horrific housing market. It also has flaws. At times, it plodded; and I saw the twist – if you can call it that – a mile off. I sensed that Lanigan was wary of stretching our suspension of disbelief too far, and thus she deprives us of a terrifying climax, or explanation. But I may be simply too addicted to the Uncanny podcast, and so crave answers where there are none. Despite these reservations, the book stayed with me: it got under my skin in a way that made me shiver. Beyond the paranormal mystery, Lanigan is more interested in exploring the psychic toll that renting takes, after 'years of existing on other people's furniture, soaking in their histories and anxieties', and the meaning of home for those who may never own their own – the very real sadness of that fact. Most of all, this novel is about the decline of spirituality, and where this generation of young adults might locate God, or the devil, in its absence. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There by Róisín Lanigan is published by Fig Tree (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
