Does a public sector AI strategy actually affect a private business in NI?

Directly, in two ways. The Executive Office has named businesses and employers, including small and medium-sized enterprises, as a group it wants to hear from, so the consultation is open to you rather than about you. And the strategy governs how AI is used across the Northern Ireland public sector, which is the counterparty in a very large share of NI contracts, grant processes, planning decisions and licensing. Eight principles covering human oversight, accountability and redress, data governance and transparency will shape what a public body can automate in a process you sit inside. If you tender for public work or wait on public decisions, the rules on that side become your operating conditions.

Where should AI spending sit in my accounts?

Split it, and do not bury the whole lot in software or subscriptions. Per-seat licences behave like any other fixed overhead and belong there. Usage-based charges behave like a cost of sale, because they rise with the volume of work you deliver. Putting both in one nominal hides the only thing worth watching, which is the variable half. Give the usage charge its own nominal code, then look at it as a cost per unit of output rather than a monthly bill. Once you can see the cost per document, per client or per job, you can price for it and you can tell whether the tool is actually earning its keep.

How do I budget for a cost that grows when the tool works?

Budget it as a rate, not as an annual figure. Fix the price per unit you are being charged, forecast the number of units at your expected volume, and then run a second number at three or four times that volume. On the illustrative firm above, year one ran at 6,000 documents and year two at 24,000, and the bill moved from 1,680 pounds to 6,720 pounds without anything going wrong. If you can absorb the high case, adopt freely. If you cannot, you have found your ceiling before it found you, and you can negotiate a capped or committed-volume arrangement while you still have a choice.

Is 60,000 NI jobs at high risk a reason to hold off on AI?

No, and the second figure in that research matters more than the first. Dr Lisa Wilson estimated roughly 7 per cent, or 60,000 jobs, at high risk from automation technologies, but a further 58 per cent at risk of substantial change to the tasks involved rather than the job disappearing. On a twelve-person firm that is about one role exposed and around seven whose content shifts. The practical work is job design, not headcount planning. Holding off does not remove the exposure, because the change lands through what your competitors can do per hour, which shows up in their pricing before it shows up in your staffing.

What is tokenomics and why should an owner care about it?

It is the arithmetic of what an AI system costs to run once it is live, rather than what it cost to buy. Marie-Claire McGreevy, quoted by the BBC, described understanding how much it would cost in the long term to deploy AI within their system as having their eyes opened. That is a cost-of-goods question wearing a technology label. An owner cares because a tool priced per unit of processing turns a fixed overhead into a variable one, and variable costs move your break-even point. If you sell fixed-fee work, every extra unit of processing comes straight off the margin on a price you already agreed.

175 jobs in Ballykelly, 60 at risk in Belfast: what NI's AI split means for your cost base

Reacting to: The emerging paradox of Northern Ireland's AI story (BBC News NI) →

John Campbell's piece for BBC News NI this morning sets two Northern Ireland stories side by side. In a converted aircraft hangar on the shores of Lough Foyle, TES in Ballykelly builds the electrical systems that AI data centres need. Its managing director Michael Beagan describes the growth as “astronomical”: a team of two on that site four years ago, about 175 employees now and growing. Meanwhile in Belfast, the US law firm Baker McKenzie's service centre of roughly 500 staff sits inside a global AI-focused review that could cost up to 1,000 support jobs, putting about 50 Belfast roles under threat. The cybersecurity firm Rapid7, with more than 500 people in its Belfast engineering centre, said this week it is cutting about 12% of jobs globally to fund an “AI-first” platform, which locally would equate to around 60 roles.

That is the paradox, and it has been well covered. Here is the part that has not been: for the overwhelming majority of Northern Ireland owners, who neither build data centre hardware nor run a multinational back office, the AI story will not arrive as a hiring decision at all. It will arrive as a line in your cost base that behaves differently from every other line you have. And it is arriving in the same eight weeks that the Executive Office is asking Northern Ireland businesses what they think about it.

What the reporting actually establishes

Taking the verified figures from the BBC report in one place, because the spread of them is the point:

TES, Ballykelly — recently bought by Legrand, one of France's largest industrial businesses, for its expertise in the electrical systems AI data centres require. From a team of two four years ago to about 175 employees, with an apprenticeship scheme in development with North West Regional College in Limavady.
Vertiv, Letterkenny — announced 300 jobs this week across the border in County Donegal. The US company entered Ireland five years ago by buying E&I Engineering from Londonderry businessman Philip O'Doherty.
Seagate, Derry — makes the hard disc drives AI companies need for data storage. Products effectively sold out to 2028, bringing security to a 1,500-strong workforce that went through redundancies in 2024.
Baker McKenzie, Belfast — about 500 staff. February's AI-focused review could mean up to 1,000 support job losses globally; roughly 50 locally.
Rapid7, Belfast — more than 500 people. A global cut of about 12% would equate to around 60 local roles, though the local split has not been stated.
The context — NI private sector employment is at a record 620,000. Against that, the numbers above are small. Direction of travel is what they indicate, not scale.

The economist Dr Lisa Wilson, who has been estimating automation impacts in a series of studies since 2019, put roughly 7%, or 60,000 NI jobs, at high risk of being lost to automation technologies in her initial study, with a further 58% at risk of substantial change to the tasks involved over the medium term. She is due to update that work, and she has been careful to press for a nuanced discussion of what stays, what is created, and how the new compares in quality to what goes.

The consultation that closes on 7 October

Running alongside all of this, and getting a fraction of the attention: the Executive Office has launched an eight-week public consultation on Northern Ireland's draft AI Strategy, published on 12 August. It sets out how the Executive plans to use AI across the NI public sector, built around eight principles — human oversight, accountability and redress, data governance, technical safety and security, fairness, transparency, sustainability, societal benefit, and training and literacy.

The Executive Office has explicitly named businesses and employers, including small and medium-sized enterprises, among the groups it wants to hear from. The consultation closes at 5pm on 7 October 2026, and there is an online questionnaire. This is a public sector strategy, so the natural reaction is that it is somebody else's document. It is not. Public bodies are the counterparty in a very large share of NI contracts, grant assessments, planning decisions and licensing. The rules governing what those bodies may automate become the conditions you operate under.

The accounting point nobody is making: AI is a variable cost

Buried near the end of the BBC piece is the sharpest business observation in it, and it comes from an entrepreneur rather than an economist. Marie-Claire McGreevy, who with Oonagh O'Reilly built Mel, an AI-powered business development platform aimed at accountants and lawyers, said working with the Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre meant “we had our eyes opened to the world of 'tokenomics' — understanding how much it's going to cost in the long term to deploy AI within our system, and how to use it strategically.”

That is a cost-of-sales question in technology clothing, and it is the thing most owners get wrong. Conventional business software is a fixed overhead. You buy seats, the bill is the same in a busy month and a quiet one, and it sits in overheads where it belongs. A great deal of AI is not sold that way. It is sold per unit of processing, which makes it a variable cost that rises with the volume of work you deliver. That is not worse. It is different, and it belongs in a different place in your numbers, because it moves your break-even point rather than your overhead total.

Worked example: the bill that quadruples because the tool worked

Take an illustrative Newry professional services firm — not a client, and the figures are chosen to be easy to follow. Twelve people, turnover £900,000, mostly fixed-fee work. It is choosing between two ways of buying the same AI document tool.

Per-seat: £22 per user per month. Twelve users, twelve months: £3,168 a year, fixed whatever happens.
Usage-based: £0.28 per document processed. In year one the firm runs 6,000 documents through it: £1,680.

Usage-based wins by £1,488, so the owner takes it, budgets £1,680, and moves on. Then year two happens: the tool works, so it stops being used on the awkward jobs and starts being used on everything. Volume goes to 24,000 documents.

Year two cost: 24,000 × £0.28 = £6,720.
Against the budget: £5,040 over.
Against the per-seat option rejected in year one: £3,552 worse.

Nothing went wrong. No supplier raised a price. The cost quadrupled because adoption succeeded, which is the one cost driver a conventional budget has no line for. On a 12% operating margin, that firm's profit is £108,000, so an unbudgeted £5,040 is 4.7% of the year's profit — not fatal, but entirely invisible until the year-end if the charge is buried in a general software nominal alongside the accounting package and the email licences.

The second worked number: task change, not headcount

Apply Dr Wilson's two figures to that same twelve-person firm, as an illustration rather than a forecast for any individual business. Her 7% high-risk estimate is roughly one role in twelve. Her 58% substantial-task-change estimate is roughly seven of the twelve.

Read together, those say something quite specific: the dominant effect is not seven redundancies, it is seven job descriptions that no longer describe the job. That is a management problem, and it lands well before any headcount decision does. Roles get re-scoped, the mix of chargeable and non-chargeable time shifts, and the basis on which you priced the work quietly stops matching how the work gets done. If you price by the hour and the hours fall, your revenue falls with them unless you change the pricing basis first.

What this means for a Northern Ireland owner specifically

The winners are concentrated, and mostly in the north west. The hardware and infrastructure upside sits with TES in Ballykelly, Seagate in Derry and Vertiv over the border in Letterkenny. If you supply, service, house, feed or transport for those operations, the growth is a live commercial opportunity and it is on your doorstep. If you do not, the boom is not a market you are in, and planning as though the regional headline applies to you would be a mistake.

The exposure is concentrated too, and it is in Belfast back offices. Baker McKenzie and Rapid7 are both examples of the service-centre model that has driven a decade of NI jobs growth. Neither is a small employer, and both sit in the professional and knowledge-processing category. If your customers are those staff, or your business services those employers, their headcount is your demand.

There is real, funded local help. The Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre is a joint Ulster University and Queen's University Belfast initiative, and the Department for the Economy puts its funding at £16.3 million. Its director David Crozier says it has worked with “every type of company you could imagine” — manufacturers making better use of sensor data, a graphic design firm speeding up its workflow — not just software start-ups. That is publicly funded support you have already paid for through the block grant.

Four things to do this week

Give AI usage its own nominal code. Not “software”. Its own line, split between fixed per-seat charges and variable per-unit charges, so you can see the cost per document, per job or per client rather than a monthly total. Our digital accounting work sets this up as part of the chart of accounts rather than as an afterthought.
Run the high case before you commit. Take whatever per-unit price you are being quoted, forecast your realistic volume, then multiply it by four. If the answer is comfortable, adopt freely. If it is not, negotiate a cap or a committed-volume rate now, while you are still the one with the choice.
Respond to the consultation. The draft AI Strategy consultation is open until 5pm on 7 October 2026 and small and medium-sized enterprises are a named audience. Business responses to NI consultations are typically outnumbered many times over by institutional ones, so an individual owner's submission carries more weight here than it would in a UK-wide process.
Talk to the AICC. Start at the AICC hub on nibusinessinfo.co.uk, and read the artificial intelligence in business guidance while you are there. It costs a phone call.

What is still uncertain, and when you will know

The Belfast job numbers are estimates, not announcements. The roughly 50 figure for Baker McKenzie is a local share of a global review, and the around 60 for Rapid7 is a 12% global rate applied to the Belfast headcount — the BBC is explicit that the local split has not been stated. Both firms will confirm actual local impacts in their own time, and until they do these are indicative rather than settled.

Dr Wilson's estimates predate the current wave. The 7% and 58% figures come from a series of studies begun in 2019 covering automation broadly, including robotics, not generative AI specifically. She is due to update that research soon, and that update is the number to wait for before anyone builds a workforce plan on it.

The strategy itself is a draft. What emerges after 7 October may differ from what is out for consultation now, and the Department for the Economy notes it is working with the Office of AI and Digital in the Executive Office on it, alongside an AI advisory panel established by the economy minister. The consultation window is the only point at which a business owner's view is formally invited.

Where we come into this

None of this needs a technology strategy. It needs one honest question answered: which of your costs are fixed, which are variable, and has a new variable one just walked in dressed as a subscription?

Our management accounts put the split in front of you monthly, so a cost that scales with your own success shows up in month three rather than at the year-end. Our cashflow and budgeting work models the high-adoption case before you sign, not after. Our advisory services cover the pricing-basis question that task change forces. And our Ballymena office covers the whole of Northern Ireland, including the cross-border side that a firm based anywhere else will not raise with you. If you want a straight answer on what your AI spend is actually doing to your margin, that is a conversation, not a project.