AI Readiness Check

How ready is your business for AI?

The AI readiness check is an AI readiness assessment questionnaire for owners of Irish SMEs who are unsure about AI. You answer twelve multiple-choice questions in four themes: data and systems, people and skills, processes worth automating, and governance. Four more questions about your business point you to a funding scheme that may fit. Your result shows a score for each theme, three next steps and the package that matches your answers, on this page only. We do not save your answers or your result: your answers are used only to build it.

Answer the questions

Choose the answer closest to your business today.

Data and systems

These questions ask where your business keeps its records and how easily you can use them.

Where does your business keep its key records, such as customers, orders and finance?
Can you get a report you need from your records without retyping figures?
Who looks after your software and data, such as backups and who has access?
People and skills

These questions ask how your team uses AI tools today and who would lead a project.

How do your staff use AI tools such as ChatGPT at work today?
Has anyone in the business learned how to use AI tools well?
Who would lead an AI or software project in your business?
Processes worth automating

These questions ask about the routine work in your week, for example document intake, quote preparation, reconciliation or support triage.

Can you name a routine task that follows the same steps each time and takes hours every week?
Are the steps of your main routine tasks written down?
What does the information for those tasks arrive as?
Governance

Article 4 of the EU AI Act has applied since 2 February 2025. National market surveillance authorities supervise and enforce it from 2 August 2026. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 replaced its wording. The new wording asks providers and deployers of AI systems to "take measures to support the development of AI literacy of their staff and other persons dealing with the operation and use of AI systems on their behalf ...". The new wording adds: "This obligation does not require providers or deployers to guarantee any specific level of AI literacy of any individual." The European Commission says "no strict requirements or mandatory trainings are imposed". It also confirms that a company whose staff use ChatGPT for work is in scope. These questions ask about the steps your business takes. They are not a legal test, and this check is not legal advice.

Does your business have a written policy on how staff may use AI tools?
Do staff know which company data, such as customer details, must not go into AI tools?
Before AI-written text or figures reach a customer, does someone check them?
Funding that may fit

These questions point you to a funding scheme that may fit. They do not decide whether you qualify. The agencies decide who is eligible; we do not.

How many paid employees does your business have?

Digital Discovery and Digital Process Innovation set their staff thresholds in "full time staff". For Digital for Business and the Grow Digital Voucher, the Local Enterprise Office's pages say the linked companies rule "requires applicants to include the data from any partner or linked enterprises when calculating their employee numbers and financial thresholds."

Is your business in manufacturing or internationally traded services?
Is your business already a client of one of these agencies?
Is your business Irish-owned?

Your answers are used only to show your result and are not stored. See our Privacy Policy.

How the score works

How your answers become a score.

Each answer in a theme scores no points, one point or two points. The first answer in each list scores none and the last scores two. Each theme has three questions, so it scores from none to six points.

  • Low: two points or fewer.
  • Middle: three or four points.
  • High: five or six points.

The funding questions score no points. They only point you to a scheme that may fit.

Your three next steps come from your three lowest-scoring themes. The package comes from your lowest-scoring theme, or from AI automation when every theme is high. When two themes score the same, we take them in the order they appear on this page.

Want to talk it through?

Two ways in. Pick whichever suits you.

Talk to a founder.

Bring your result. You leave with an honest answer on whether we can help, and where we would start.

Compare the packages.

See every package side by side, with what each one includes and what it costs, before you talk to anyone.