The EU's tech chief will headline a Dublin copyright conference hosted by Ireland's record industry

Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, will deliver the keynote at a Dublin conference on copyright and AI on October 14, 2026. The Irish Recorded Music Association and NewsBrands Ireland are hosting it jointly, and announced the lineup on September 3.

Read the guest list rather than the agenda. Ireland’s record labels and its newspaper publishers booked the Commissioner who owns EU tech policy, and they did it while Ireland runs the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Who is speaking in Dublin on October 14

Alongside Virkkunen, the keynote list runs to Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke, Minister of State for Trade Promotion, AI and Digital Transformation Niamh Smyth, and Professor Eleonora Rosati, a copyright and IP law academic. Daniel McConnell, Editor of the Business Post, hosts.

The panels gather policymakers, legal experts, rights holders, creators and people from media and the creative industries. The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment is backing the event.

The stated questions are how to build trust around AI use, how to develop a working market for licensing copyrighted works, and how to make copyright protections enforceable in practice. That third one is where music has been losing.

What IRMA and NewsBrands Ireland are asking for

IRMA’s ask is narrow and specific: keep transparency and accountability obligations attached to AI tools rather than letting them get traded away.

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Without the necessary guardrails, music and other creative output can be taken without authorization or payment, diverting money away from rights holders.

Kitching also frames Ireland as able to lead on this precisely because it is both a tech hub and a country that funds culture. That is a deliberate pitch to a government hosting the EU presidency and headquartering large tech firms at the same time.

NewsBrands Ireland CEO Ann Marie Lenihan made the publisher version of the argument, saying publishers must keep control over how journalism is accessed, licensed, reproduced and used to train AI systems. Her line was that strong IP rights are the foundation sustainable innovation depends on, not a barrier to it.

Why music and newspapers are running this together

Labels and publishers have the same problem with different catalogs. Both had work ingested for training, both want licensing markets that pay, and neither can enforce much alone. Splitting the bill on a conference during Ireland’s EU presidency is cheaper than lobbying separately.

Ireland’s parliament already debated this ground. I covered the Dáil motion asking Ireland to use its presidency on AI copyright in July, which IMRO and The Ivors Academy backed. The October conference is the industry-side version of that push.

The timing sits against live EU enforcement questions, including the AI Act transparency rules that determine whether AI-generated music gets labelled at all. Digital Music News reported the invitation on September 4.

A conference is not a policy. But getting the person who drafts the policy to keynote your event is the step before one.