The questions people actually ask
These are the things that come up on nearly every first call, answered properly. If yours isn’t here, ask us directly and we’ll answer it the same way.
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No, and you’re in the majority. Sixteen percent of Irish SMEs say not knowing where to start is what holds them back, and a further thirty percent say fear of getting it wrong. That’s what the first conversation is for. You describe what’s slowing your business down, and we tell you whether AI would help.
Probably not. We work with businesses from around ten people upward, and with individual departments inside larger organisations. Smaller businesses often see the clearest wins, because one repetitive process eating a day a week matters more when there are twelve of you than when there are twelve hundred.
No. Most of our clients aren’t. If anything, businesses without an in-house tech team often get more from AI, because nobody has already automated the obvious things.
Some are. CSO figures put Irish enterprise AI use at 20.2% in 2025, rising from 8.1% in 2023, and most of that is fairly basic: data mining, text generation and workflow automation. If you feel behind, you’re probably less behind than you think.
Often it isn’t. Plenty of what we’re asked to solve with AI is better handled by changing a process or fixing the data underneath it. We’ll tell you that on the first call, and it won’t cost you anything to find out.
It depends on what you’re building and what condition your systems are in. What we can do is give you an indicative range on a 30-minute call, which is more useful than any figure we could publish here. Every stage after that carries a fixed price agreed before it starts.
Because a quote before anyone has looked at your business is a guess. We’d rather spend half an hour understanding the problem and give you a real number.
A readiness assessment. It’s fixed-price, takes one to three weeks, and ends with a written report you keep whether or not you go further.
Possibly. Enterprise Ireland’s Access Advice: Digital Discovery offers up to 80% funding to a maximum of €5,000 for hiring an expert to take a first or next step in AI. Local Enterprise Offices run the Grow Digital Voucher at 50% up to €5,000, though that one excludes bespoke development. Our full guide covers which fits AI Grants Ireland
Only if you want support. The system is yours after final payment, with no per-seat licensing and no obligation to keep paying us.
That’s normal. We work in two-week sprints, and you’ll see exactly what any change does to the timeline and cost before it’s agreed.
It’s processed in the EU and stays there. We don’t use your data to train public models.
No, and it’s the single most common worry we hear. Most businesses come to us with scattered spreadsheets, cluttered inboxes and PDFs nobody can find. Working out what you actually have is part of the job, and we only tidy what a specific use genuinely needs.
Not if it’s built properly, but this is a real risk and worth taking seriously. Connecting AI to your documents makes existing permission problems visible immediately. If salary files or HR records have been technically accessible to people who never happened to look, AI search will surface them. Every integration we build starts with a permissions review for that reason.
We’re ISO 27001:2022 certified for information security, independently audited. GDPR compliance is designed into how we build rather than added afterwards, and we’ll sign an NDA before any detailed conversation.
You do. After final payment, the software, the trained models and the data produced during the engagement are all yours.
A readiness assessment runs one to three weeks. A proof of concept runs four to eight. Full builds vary by scope, and you’ll have a timeline before each stage starts.
The same people who scope it. That’s deliberate, and it’s why our recommendations tend to be realistic about what’s achievable.
No. Many of our clients don’t have one. We communicate in plain language and you’ll have one named project manager rather than a rotating cast.
You’d know long before the end. Work goes to a staging environment every fortnight for your team to test, which is specifically so feedback arrives while it’s still cheap to act on.
Not in how we build it. Every system has a named person approving anything that matters. The AI handles the repetitive part, your team handles the judgement. That’s better practice, and it’s what the EU AI Act expects of businesses deploying AI.
Yes, at the end of any stage, and you keep everything produced up to that point.
Yes. We deliver across Ireland and the UK, mostly remote with on-site sessions where the project needs them, and sterling invoicing is available.
No. We don’t resell any AI platform, so there’s no margin riding on what we recommend. Sometimes the honest answer is that a free tool does what you need.
There isn’t one. Thirty minutes, no obligation, and no follow-up unless you want it. Sometimes we tell people they don’t need us.
AI Consulting Services is a trading name of Smart Stats Limited, part of the Square Root Solutions group. Behind the name is a decade of building software and AI products, 350+ projects delivered and a team of 150+ engineers.
We’ll say so. That’s more useful than agreement, and you’ll keep whatever analysis we’ve done either way.
Yes, before any detailed discussion of your project.
If you use AI at all, at least partly. For most businesses using AI tools built by others, there are three duties: don’t use banned practices, ensure your staff have sufficient AI literacy, and tell people when they’re dealing with AI. The heavy obligations apply to high-risk uses like recruitment and credit scoring. Our full guide explains it Eu Ai Act Ireland
Partly. The Digital Omnibus, which came into force in July 2026, moved the high-risk deadlines to December 2027 and August 2028. Everything else stayed on schedule, and enforcement began in August 2026. If you’ve read that nothing applies until 2027, that’s wrong.
It’s the international standard for AI management systems. We’re one of Ireland’s first companies to achieve it, which means our AI governance was independently audited rather than self-declared. In practice it means we know what an auditor actually asks to see, because we’ve been asked.
No. Certification comes from accredited certification bodies, not consultants. We hold it ourselves and can tell you what the process involved, but achieving it is a separate undertaking.
No. We advise on practical compliance: what to document, how to design oversight, which policies you need. For a formal legal opinion on your obligations, speak to a solicitor. We work alongside them regularly.
