Will AI Replace Finance Jobs in Ireland? Here’s What to Do in 2025

AI is reshaping finance jobs across Ireland: the TASC/FSU analysis notes the financial services sector employs nearly 60,000 people and that roughly 63% of roles face exposure to AI-driven disruption, with routine administrative tasks most at risk and graduate hiring already softening as firms automate accounts payable, payroll and similar work - trends echoed in the Morgan McKinley coverage of reduced graduate intake and AIB's Microsoft-enabled rollout.

Worker sentiment is stark: about 88% expect displacement, 60% feel less secure and only around 28% feel adequately prepared, so the immediate task for employers and policymakers is clear - pair AI adoption with training, transparent governance and targeted reskilling to protect the talent pipeline and ensure gains in productivity reach employees and communities.

Read the full TASC/FSU report and the Morgan McKinley analysis for detailed findings.

Metric	Value
Financial services employees (Ireland)	Nearly 60,000
Jobs exposed to AI	~63%
Workers who expect job displacement	88%
Workers feeling less secure than five years ago	60%
Workers who feel prepared to use AI	28%

“While many workers acknowledge AI's potential benefits, including increased efficiency and improved decision-making, these advantages are overshadowed by fears of job loss, wage stagnation and intensified managerial oversight.”

By mid‑2025 the story in Ireland's finance sector is no longer just “fewer or more jobs” but “different jobs”: professional vacancies rose 10% in Q2 even as recruiters flag AI and automation are reshaping accountancy and finance hiring, with routine tasks like accounts payable, credit control and payroll increasingly automated and graduate intake falling short of past levels see the Morgan McKinley Q2 Employment Monitor.

Employers are shifting spending into data engineering, FP&A and commercial finance roles that demand SQL and Power BI, and into compliance posts such as AML/KYC while preparing data pipelines ahead of wider AI rollouts; that trend helps explain why AIB's Microsoft Copilot deployment prompted high‑profile union concern about displacement and reskilling.

The practical risk is stark: when graduates miss out on “first‑rung” training - budget reconciliations and first‑pass audit checks - they may never get the hands‑on grounding that builds future middle managers, so the immediate priority for firms is pairing automation with structured reskilling and transparent change agreements.

For deeper coverage, read the Morgan McKinley report and the Irish Times analysis of accountancy hiring.

Metric	2025 Q2 / Insight
Professional job openings (Q2 vs Q1)	+10%
Year‑on‑year change in vacancies	-1.8%
Jobs exposed to AI (Ireland)	~63%
Graduate hiring (accounting/finance)	Notable reductions reported

“The standout development this quarter is the significant impact of AI and automation, particularly within the accountancy and finance sectors.”

The roles most exposed in Ireland are the predictable, routine-heavy parts of finance: office administration, payroll and accounts payable, secretarial and customer-service functions, plus first‑pass reconciliations and credit‑control work that can be encoded into rules or trained models - precisely the tasks flagged as highest risk in TASC report: Accounting for Workers in the Age of AI.

Departmental research and industry commentary put roughly 63% of jobs in scope of some AI exposure and about 30% as “negatively exposed,” with younger staff and women disproportionately concentrated in those routine roles, while city hubs such as Dublin show higher concentrations of vulnerable posts.

Local studies also warn that automation risk is uneven: UCC found around two in five jobs in towns sit at high risk, meaning whole communities - not just individual teams - can lose those career‑building entry rungs that turn clerks into future managers.

The practical takeaway for firms and workers is stark: jobs that are repeatable, measurable and rule‑based are first in the firing line, while roles requiring judgement, stakeholder trust and complex human interaction remain harder to automate.

Metric	Value / Finding
Jobs exposed to AI (Ireland)	~63% (TASC / Dept. analysis)
Jobs negatively exposed	~30% (Department of Finance)
Jobs at high risk in many towns	~40–44% (UCC study)

“The impact of automation in Ireland is going to be felt far and wide... the pattern of job risk from automation across Ireland demands policy that is not one-size-fits-all.” - Dr Frank Crowley

In Ireland the clearest near‑term wins are in augmented roles where human strengths - judgement, client trust, cross‑selling and complex problem solving - remain central: FP&A and financial analysts, fraud investigators, business partners and customer‑facing agents are increasingly supported by GenAI and agentic systems so specialists can interpret outputs and focus on relationships rather than repetitive data grooming; as PwC describes, AI agents can act “like tireless, hyper‑intelligent executive assistants,” enabling people to add the judgement machines cannot.

But caution matters: fewer than a quarter of organisations have yet translated efficiency gains into clear profit uplift, so investment in data governance, modern ERPs, and continuous upskilling (the specific gaps PwC flags for Irish finance) is essential if these augmented roles are to deliver durable value.

The short story for Irish finance workers: learn to orchestrate AI, not just use it - master data, communication and business partnering - and the roles that combine technical fluency with human judgement will be the ones that grow.

Metric	Ireland (source)
Irish CEOs reporting efficiency gains from AI	44%
Organisations showing profit impact from AI	~24% (fewer than a quarter)
Leaders expecting workforce to need new skills	73%
Growth in AI‑exposed occupations in Ireland since 2019	~94%
Wage premium for AI skills	56%

“AI amplifies expertise. It doesn't replace your ability to think; it makes you a better thinker.” - Ger McDonough, PwC Ireland

Early‑career finance talent in Ireland is being reshaped fast: recruitment data shows professional vacancies rose in Q2 even as firms sharply cut graduate intake, with many employers electing to automate “first‑rung” tasks like budget reconciliations, first‑pass audit checks, accounts payable and payroll that used to teach new hires the trade; the result is a real risk to the talent pipeline as firms report they now want people with one to two years' experience or specific skills such as SQL and Power BI, and apprenticeships or industry placements are becoming crucial stepping stones.

The Morgan McKinley Q2 Employment Monitor highlights this tension - AI is driving demand for data engineering roles while shrinking routine graduate posts - so universities, employers and policymakers must accelerate placements, skills‑based hiring and supervised AI‑oversight training to avoid a mid‑career shortage down the line (and to keep the next generation of managers from being a cohort that never learned the basics).

For on‑the‑ground coverage see the Morgan McKinley Q2 Employment Monitor report on Irish professional job vacancies and the RTÉ report on graduate hiring decline and AI impact in Ireland on the decline in graduate hiring.

Metric	Q2 2025 / Finding
Professional vacancies (Q2)	Just over 53,300 (+10% vs Q1)
Year‑on‑year change	-1.8%
Job seeker activity	-6% vs Q1
Graduate hiring	Notable reductions reported

“The notable reduction in graduate hiring by major firms, driven by AI capabilities, highlights potential challenges ahead.” - Morgan McKinley

Employer responses in Ireland have been brisk and sometimes tense: AIB's Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout - now being extended to roughly 10,000 staff as part of an AI Centre of Excellence - is presented by the bank as a way to cut repetitive work and upskill colleagues, while the Financial Services Union has pushed back hard, demanding a formal, negotiated AI agreement and clear guarantees on consultation, reskilling, “human in command” safeguards and collective bargaining over any material impact; the clash is more than abstract policy - staff have raised concrete concerns about training gaps, job displacement and even new hybrid rules that could force some to choose a five‑hour daily commute or overnight stays in Dublin.

Read the FSU's call for an AI‑specific pact and AIB's announcement for the underlying details and timelines, and note the common ground: the bank says it will engage and provide training, the union wants legally binding assurances - what follows will shape whether automation becomes a managed upgrade or a disruptive shock to careers and communities.

Metric / Item	Finding
AIB staff with Copilot access	~10,000
FSU: workers expecting job displacement	88%
FSU: workers who feel prepared to use AI	28%
FSU: organisations offering no training (reported)	40%
FSU requested assurances	4 key assurances (engagement, reskilling, human in command, collective bargaining)

“AI is advancing at a rapid pace. It is vital that unions, employers, regulators and legislators work together to ensure a fair and transparent implementation program.”

New jobs in Ireland's finance market are clustering around data and analytics: demand for data engineers

continues to rise

according to industry commentary, and Dublin job boards show roles from junior through principal levels that explicitly ask for Airflow, Snowflake, Python, SQL and dbt - the practical glue for AI‑ready finance teams (Data Engineering in Ireland: jobs growth and future outlook and a rolling list of Dublin vacancies on Data Engineer jobs in Dublin - Built In Dublin).

Employers are paying for those skills: senior data engineers and architects command six‑figure packages while entry roles start in the mid‑€30ks, so upskilling in cloud platforms, ETL/ELT tooling, BI (Power BI/Tableau) and production data pipelines is now the clearest route from routine finance work into resilient, AI‑complementary roles (Data & Analytics salaries in Ireland 2025 - Connexus survey).

Role	Typical 2025 Salary (Ireland)
Senior Data Engineer	€95,000 – €115,000
Data Architect	€90,000 – €120,000
Cloud Data Engineer	€80,000 – €100,000
Junior Data Analyst	€35,000 – €45,000
Senior Data Scientist	€105,000+

Practical preparation in 2025 means three clear moves for finance workers in Ireland: focus squarely on data and digital skills (data analytics, AI literacy, SQL/Power BI and cybersecurity), secure work‑based learning or apprenticeships so learning is tethered to real finance workflows, and adopt a layered, continuous upskilling plan that employers and education partners can recognise on the CV; these steps mirror the National Skills Strategy's push for employer placements and lifelong learning (Ireland's National Skills Strategy 2025), the UCD Professional Academy's call for tailored digital upskilling in finance (UCD Professional Academy report on digital upskilling in Irish finance), and practical how‑to guidance on piloting AI safely in accounting and reconciliation workflows (see the Nucamp guide to using AI in Irish finance for concrete toolkits and pilot checklists: Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus: Guide to using AI in finance).

Treat upskilling like a savings plan - small, regular investments in applied skills (cloud, ETL, BI, data governance and cybersecurity) compound into resilience, and aim for roles that blend judgement with machine output rather than purely routine tasks.

Practical step	Why / source
Prioritise data, AI and cybersecurity training	UCD, IFS Skillnet - closes digital skills gap
Pursue apprenticeships and work placements	National Skills Strategy 2025 - employer involvement & work‑based learning
Adopt layered, continuous learning programmes	UCD & PwC - tailored learning for different skill levels; upskilling is dominant strategy
Pilot AI tools on low‑risk tasks and measure value	Nucamp guide - safe automation & piloting checklists

“In a rapidly changing world, the importance of developing a skilled workforce to enable a thriving economy is the subject of increased focus from industry leaders. This is an opportune moment for the financial sector to adopt a strategic approach to workforce upskilling to ensure they are best positioned to continue to thrive in the years ahead. At UCD Professional Academy, our curated courses can be built to adapt to the needs of individual organisations or companies. We are constantly updating and developing our learning modules in line with industry developments, making us the ideal upskilling partner for a fast-changing sector.”

Ireland's policy and industry response to AI in 2025 is shifting from headlines to hard choices: the Irish Programme for Government flags AI as critical infrastructure, EU rules are already landing (the EU AI Act began phased implementation on 2 February 2025) and a private member's Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill introduced in March 2025 has put the idea of an Irish AI authority on the table - so employers cannot treat AI as a purely technical upgrade.

Businesses and financial firms should therefore pair pilots with clear governance, continuous staff upskilling and risk assessments while keeping an eye on cross‑border rules: data protection authorities including Ireland's have signalled joint expectations on privacy‑protective AI, and the EU's broader €50bn push (including “AI factories”) means regulatory and investment landscapes will evolve fast.

For practical next steps, monitor the EU AI Act timetable, align vendor contracts and data flows with emerging guidance, and use regulatory sandboxes and industry toolkits to pilot safely and retain workforce trust; see updates from Maples on policy shifts and Eversheds Sutherland's regulatory roundup for detail.

Policy item	Detail / source
EU AI Act roll‑out	Phased implementation began 2 Feb 2025; full timetable to Aug 2027 - Maples: Ireland AI policy and legislation update
Irish legislative move	Private member's AI Regulation Bill introduced March 2025 proposing an AI authority - Eversheds Sutherland: Global AI regulatory update (May 2025)
EU investment & coordination	€50bn EU AI investment (incl. €10bn for AI factories); joint data‑protection statements include Ireland - Maples: Ireland AI policy and legislation update

In short: Ireland's finance market is resilient but changing fast - professional vacancies rose 10% in Q2 2025 even as AI and automation shrink routine graduate intake, so the smartest move is career cushioning through targeted upskilling in data, analytics and AI literacy (think SQL, Power BI and production data skills) and by piloting applied learning inside the job; for a market view, see the Morgan McKinley Ireland Q2 2025 Employment Monitor, and for practical, work‑focused AI training consider the Nucamp Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus (15 weeks, hands‑on prompts and tool use).

Treat upskilling like a regular savings plan - small, consistent investments in cloud, ETL/BI and AI‑at‑work skills compound into real protection and mobility - and prioritise placements or project‑tethered learning so early‑career entrants still get the “first‑rung” experience AI risks removing.

Program	Length	Early bird cost	Syllabus
AI Essentials for Work	15 Weeks	$3,582	Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus (15 weeks)

“The standout development this quarter is the significant impact of AI and automation, particularly within the accountancy and finance sectors.”