I went to an AI event in Galway last week. The event was AI Works for Ireland, hosted by Google and the Local Enterprise Offices, and the room was full of Irish small businesses. Product makers, service providers, retailers, consultants, all there for the same reason. They wanted to understand what AI actually means for businesses like theirs.
What I left with was a clearer picture of where AI for small business in Ireland actually stands right now. And it was more honest than most of what you read online.
If you follow any AI content online you'd be forgiven for thinking every small business owner is already automating half their company and prompting like a pro.
Why are most Irish small businesses still not using AI?
The data on the day showed that only 37% of Irish SMBs are using AI regularly in any part of their business. That alone is striking, but it's not the most interesting part. The most interesting part is why the other 63% aren't.
The top two barriers to adopting AI fully, according to the data presented, are fear of making a mistake (30%) and lack of skills (27%). The barriers are not cost, not access, not a lack of interest. They are fear and not knowing where to start.
The hesitation most small business owners feel around AI isn't about capability. It's about confidence. The worry that you'll do it wrong, that you'll lose something essential about how you work. That's a very human response, and the answer to it isn't more information. It's one smaller, safer first step.
The message every speaker kept coming back to
What was most interesting throughout the day, across keynotes, panel discussions, and the practical deep dive session, was that the same message surfaced again and again in different forms. AI is there as a support, not a replacement. Start with one simple workflow. There is no need to build a full strategy before you've tried one thing.
Christine Braithwaite, the Google trainer who led the afternoon session, put it directly: it's not about replacing what you do, it's about supporting how you work.
The framing I found most useful was: train your AI tool the way you'd induct a new team member. Give it context. Tell it who your business is, who your customers are, what matters to you. Don't expect it to read your mind from day one.
For prompting specifically, the Google team shared their core three principles. Give it a persona: tell it what role you want it to play. Give it context: where you're based, who your customers are. And iterate: your first answer is a starting point, not a finished draft. Those three things alone will change the quality of what you get back, regardless of which tool you're using.
What the ROI data actually shows
The business case presented during the day is worth paying attention to. According to Google's research, 74% of executives report seeing a return on their AI investment within the first year, and of those reporting increased revenue, 53% estimate gains of between 6 and 10%. The areas where businesses are seeing the biggest impact are productivity (70%), customer experience (63%) and marketing (55%).
For most small businesses, that doesn't translate to complex AI systems or automated pipelines. It looks like writing content more quickly, handling routine enquiries without losing your voice, organising your thinking before a client call, and planning more efficiently. These are accessible wins that don't require a tech background or a large budget.
The businesses seeing these results aren't doing anything extraordinary. They started somewhere small, learned what worked for them, and built from there.
What a successful Irish brand is actually doing with AI
The closing session of the day was a fireside chat with Aimee Connolly, founder of Sculpted by Aimee.
What struck me wasn't the scale of what her brand is doing with AI: virtual try-on, automated stock systems, a digital version of Aimee herself in their London store. It was how straightforwardly she framed the decision to adopt it, following an intensive course she completed at Harvard on AI last year. AI, she said, is an enhancement, not a replacement. It's an additional support in your business. And her advice for where to start was the same thing every other speaker had said: try one thing. And more specifically, get a handle on the quality of the data you're feeding your AI tools, because that's where most businesses come unstuck.
The line that stayed with me was this: AI is the quickest unlocker to get more time in your business. Coming from someone running a genuinely large Irish consumer brand, that's not a content creator's talking point. It's an operational reality.
The gap isn't information. It's permission to begin.
One thing I noticed in the room was that most people there weren't sceptics. They weren't dismissive of AI or resistant to change. They were curious and slightly overwhelmed, which is a very different thing. They'd heard about AI for small businesses, knew they probably should be doing something with it, and weren't sure what that something was or where to begin without it all going wrong.
That gap, between knowing something exists and feeling confident enough to use it in your business, is a real one. And it doesn't close by attending an event or reading a report. It closes when someone shows you what it actually looks like in a business like yours.
The advice that stayed with me from the day was simple: you don't need a full strategy. You need one useful workflow, something relevant to your specific business, and the willingness to treat it as a starting point rather than a finished solution.
Where to go from here
If you're running a small business in Ireland and you're in that 63%, you are not behind. You are the majority. And the businesses that are pulling ahead aren't necessarily smarter or more technical. They just started somewhere.
That's the work I hope to do here. Not to hand you a roadmap for AI transformation, as that will be different for everyone and it's evolving, but to show you what one useful workflow actually looks like, without the overwhelm and without the hype.
If you've been waiting for a reason to start, this seems like a reasonable one.