The Irish Tech News Podcast

The Beta Festival, Irelands Technology and Arts Festival which starts today is taking place across Dublin till November 22nd. In its fourth year, this year's Beta Festival explores how technology is reshaping how we sense, perceive and understand the world around us. To find out more about this year’s Beta Festival I caught up with Aisling Murray, Beta Festival’s founder and Director
Aisling talks about her background, Beta Festival, festival highlights, AI, and more.
More about the Beta Festival:
Bringing together artists working across installation, performance, sound, games, AI and digital media, the 2026 Beta Festival programme asks what happens when we de-centre the human perspective and begin to consider the intelligence of landscapes, plants, animals and machines. Audiences are invited to encounter technologies as systems that shape our relationships with each other and with the environments we inhabit.  
Renowned neurodivergent artist AlanJames Burns premieres his new exhibition, Unmasking Nature - an interactive installation featuring a rich landscape of new multi-sensory artworks. Unmasking Nature presents a sensory feast, foraged from Ireland's rich biodiversity to explore the diverse ways people connect to the world around us. The installation invites visitors to experience a number of interactive sensory activities. Society pressures neurodivergent people to mask their true selves. Yet, nature depends on diversity. Unmasking Nature is a sanctuary for restoration.
Exploring the entangled boundaries between the digital and the living, Beta Festival this year launches a new strand of programming for non-human audiences. Titled ‘The Other Audience’ the inaugural exhibition begins with our most immediate non-human companions: our pets. Dublin-based artist Gabriela Waclawska has developed a new work that takes animals seriously as audiences, participants, and co-creators.
Waclawska's 'woofy woofy ૮֊˕֊ა੭ bow-wow hauhau', is an interactive sound installation for dogs that explores what happens when canines are given the freedom to play, explore and simply be themselves. Dogs attending the event will even make their own music, and their owners are welcome to attend too.  Each half hour slot welcomes 5 dogs and their owners into the space. The interactive installation will run at Project Arts Centre from 17 to 19 November.

At the moment businesses are going through their biggest digital transformation since they adopted cloud computing, as they get to grips with AI.  Businesses risk focusing too much on the technology itself when approaching AI transformation. Daire Cunningham, COO at Spanish Point Technologies thinks that amid the rush to adopt AI, businesses can easily start with the wrong question, which AI tool should we use, rather than what problem are we actually trying to solve? 
I recently caught up with Daire. and he spoke to me about his background, what Spanish Point Technologies does, AI, Microsoft partnership, data centres and more.
More about Spanish Point Technologies:
Spanish Point Technologies is a pioneering software engineering firm and founding Microsoft Partner based in Dublin. Established in 2005 by CEO John Corley and Chairman Donal Cullen, the company’s 100+ strong team of software engineers drives growth through innovative projects and long-term customer partnerships. The business spans three core areas.
Smart AIM is an Azure DevOps accelerator for ISVs and software development companies, providing prebuilt libraries and framework services that streamline development, minimise risk, and maximise ROI. Smart AIM has been implemented for over 30 organisations across 60 projects in Ireland, the UK, and the Nordics.
Matching Engine is an enterprise software solution for international Collective Management Organisations that ensures rights holders are paid fairly for their intellectual property. Since its launch in 2018, the Matching Engine has expanded to 13 countries across Europe and North America. Customers using the platform distribute over €2.6 billion in royalties annually, guaranteeing fair remuneration for more than 758,000 rights holders and creators worldwide. Spanish Point’s digital transformation practice delivers award-winning, solution-focused engineering for enterprises tackling complex technology challenges in the UK and Ireland.
Recognised among the top 1% of Microsoft cloud partners worldwide, Spanish Point is Ireland’s largest Azure partner and an Azure Expert Managed Service Provider (MSP). The company holds Microsoft Azure Solution Partner designations for Digital & App Innovation, Data & AI, and Infrastructure, and is a two-time winner of the Microsoft Ireland Country Partner of the Year Award (2016, 2019). Most recently, Spanish Point became the first indigenous company in the Republic of Ireland to earn the Microsoft Azure Specialisation to Build and Modernise AI Apps.

Manage Engine recently announced plans to expand their Ireland operations after 25% year on year growth. Manage Engine,is  a division of Zoho Corporation and a leading provider of enterprise IT management and security solutions. and  has been in Ireland for nearly two decades. Their continued growth in Ireland can also be attributed to ManageEngine's local partner,Servaplex.
To find out more about this I recently caught up with Rajesh Ganesan CEO Manage Engine, Gerry Cullen Sales Director and Co-founder Servaplex, and Tim McAlpin Director and Co-founder Servaplex.
Rajesh, Gerry and Tim talk about their background, on prem v cloud, increased costs, AI, ticketing growth in Ireland and more.

More about Servaplex:
Servaplex works across government, education, financial services, construction and manufacturing, supplying, implementing and supporting enterprise IT-management technology, and has developed a particularly long relationship with ManageEngine, dating back around 17 years.

HIQA’s recently published Ireland’s first national guidance on the responsible and safe use of AI in health. The guidance highlights the potential for ambient AI tools to reduce administrative work and give clinicians more time with patients, while stressing the need for human oversight, governance, staff training and ongoing monitoring.
To find out more about this I caught up with  Jonathan Larbey, CEO of Dublin-headquartered clinical documentation company T-Pro.
Jonathan talks about his background, regulation, what T-Pro does, what HIQA’s guidance means for the safe, practical use of ambient AI in healthcare, AI powered documentation and more.
More about Jonathan Larbey:
Jonathan Larbey is the Founder and CEO of T-Pro, which he built from an Irish digital voice technology start-up into one of healthcare's leading clinical AI platforms, now trusted by 132,000+ clinicians and 1,000+ organisations across the UK, Ireland and Australia. He was named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year finalist in 2024.
Jonathan's view of the industry is that the value of clinical AI isn't in generating a note, but in completing the whole documentation lifecycle, safely and at scale. That belief shows up directly in how he leads: he builds technology around how care is actually delivered, putting clinicians and governance first rather than retrofitting workflows to the tool.
Under his leadership, T-Pro has focused on lifting the clerical burden of documentation and unlocking the value of clinical data, so clinicians and healthcare leaders can spend more time with patients and less on admin.

A lot of companies are now connecting AI directly to more systems: CRM, email, meeting recorders, Slack, documents and internal knowledge. On paper, that looks like the obvious next step. Give AI access to everything, and it should be able to help with anything. But access alone does not create understanding. One person who knows all about this is Roope Heinilä, founder and CEO of optivian.ai, and he recently wrote about the hidden cost of connecting AI straight to the sales stack. Every time someone asks a question like “where does this deal stand?”, the AI often has to rebuild the picture from raw material: emails, transcripts, notes and CRM records. It can pull in too much noise, miss important context, and start from scratch again the next time. To find out more I caught up with Roope.
Roope talks about his background, what Optivian does, SaaS, and more.
More about Roope Heinilä:
Before Roope founded Optivan. he founded Smarp, scaled it to a successful exit, and later served as Group CEO of Haiilo, a larger enterprise SaaS business with 700+ enterprise customers.