While council staff are barred from using free AI chatbots, councillors are trained on them

While staff at Dublin City Council are prohibited from using free generative AI tools, councillors are being trained how best to use them.

Guidelines for staff say the “use of free and publicly accessible Gen AI tools present a significant risk for organisations due to a lack of effective safeguards ensuring data privacy and safety”.

But Dublin City Council, on 17 February, provided a training seminar organised by the Association of Irish Local Government on the use of Chat GPT’s free version.

The AILG-led webinar was originally carried out in March 2025 as part of its Elected Member Training Programme, said Elaine Lynch, AILG’s Head of Operations and Member Services, on Friday.

It formed part of a broader programme to support councillors in their public-facing communications and community engagement, she said, “particularly in the context of digital platforms and social media”.

The webinar video was issued to Dublin city councillors last month in response to a request by Social Democrats Councillor Cat O’Driscoll following their monthly Protocol Committee meeting on 29 January.

But, it was likely issued by mistake, because she had specifically requested a recent training seminar by the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA) on the use of Microsoft Copilot, O’Driscoll says.

Dublin City Council has paid for licences to use Microsoft Copilot, and O’Driscoll wanted the council to share with her colleagues a seminar about it that she’d attended herself, she said on Tuesday. 

“One of the things it did really well was how to craft prompts, like review forms, active travel reports, and explain in the form of a matrix, what changes have been made for the funding of a cycle lane in my area,” she said.

A spokesperson for the council did not comment on Friday when asked to confirm if the council had erroneously sent out the AILG seminar on Chat GPT rather than the NILGA seminar on Copilot.

Public speaking

The hour-long training session led by Lynch explained to attendees how they could use Chat GPT to craft press releases, brainstorm social media post ideas and create speaking points for council agenda items and speeches at monthly meetings.

It acknowledged the limitations and risks associated with publicly available and free generative AI tools, including data protection and privacy considerations, Lynch said via email on Friday.

“Councillors were explicitly advised that such tools should not be used for processing personal data, confidential information or any material relating to internal local authority systems or decision-making,” she said.

The association keeps its training under regular review and any future training will continue to focus on responsible, ethical and appropriate uses for generative AI, she said, “particularly in relation to communications and public engagement”.

As workload gets heavier, councillors eye up AI assistants

“You could get 500 emails, and I do recall my friend saying ‘God, why don’t you get Copilot?’”

Dublin InQuirerMichael Lanigan

Generative AI, free or licenced, isn’t something O’Driscoll, the Social Democrats councillor, says she would use for communications, however. “I wouldn’t have it answer emails or write press releases or anything like that,” she said.

“The minute I ask it to write me, say, four paragraphs on air quality in Dublin, I’m losing the ability to influence what I’m actually saying,” she says. 

“It could give me anything back about air quality in Dublin,” she said. “It could use the AirQuality.ie data which says air quality is great all the time. So, just because it’s on the internet, doesn’t make it true.”

Yes, there are obvious issues that arise here in terms of accuracy, says Kris Shrishak, a public interest technologist in the Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL). “These are probabilistic generators. Expecting them to be accurate is more out of a fluke than a design.”

Besides the risk of reputational damage from potentially distributing inaccurate information, relaying misinformation or hallucinations to citizens may also cause other problems, he said. 

“If it was supposed to be some important information, there are downstream consequences of receiving inaccurate information,” he said. 

Who is currently restricted?

There are also the data privacy and safety concerns around the use of free generative AI tools, which Dublin City Council’s guidelines raised.

“Public Gen AI models should not be used for business purposes, and any tools implemented must be enterprise-approved (DCC approved), ensuring compliance with data protection and security standards,” the guidelines say.

So staff in Dublin City Council aren’t permitted to use free, publicly available generative AI tools for any council-related or professional tasks, the guidelines say. Instead, they should use the tools for which the council has a proper business licence.

Says Shrishak, of the ICCL: “The claim is that it’s not the same as the public version. Although we can’t verify, of course.”

Licensed generative AI tools “potentially” have additional safeguards in place that free versions do not”, he says. “The main difference, with respect to the contracts, is that you have the companies making claims that they would protect the person later.”

In principle, the licence holder can hold a company accountable, he says. “With the free version, you don’t even have that.”

Similar to Dublin City Council, the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation says in its own guidelines that these “very accessible” free tools don’t have “suitable management and oversight” and therefore pose significant risk if used in the public sector.

However, the Dublin City Council guidelines on generative AI use do not apply to its councillors. 

Councillors have their own ethical guidelines, says Green Party councillor Ray Cunningham. “That’s more about behaviour and donations, things like that. In terms of work practices, it wouldn’t really qualify or be covered.”

This is the same with other local authorities in Dublin.

A spokesperson for South Dublin County Council said that they have invested in a limited number of licences for Copilot, and have also established an AI policy for staff.

That also prohibits staff from the use of free or public generative AI tools, they say. But, “the council do not dictate to councillors which AI can or can’t be used. SDCC has no role in doing so”.

Dún Laoghaire‑Rathdown County Council doesn’t operate a council-wide production licence for generative AI platforms, their spokesperson said.

But, DLRCC is taking part in a Local Government Management Agency-led 90‑day pilot of Copilot, alongside eight other local authorities, they said. “The purpose of this pilot is to evaluate where generative AI can meaningfully support efficiencies, improve internal workflows, and complement service delivery within the organisation.”

They have a formal corporate AI policy, approved in 2025, which includes guidelines on which tools staff can use, as well as prohibiting the entering of sensitive or confidential information into public AI systems, they said.

DLRCC also established an internal “AI Assist” programme to support awareness, training and good governance around AU usage across the organisation, they said.

But, they did not specify if the policy applied to councillors as well as staff.