If you're an Irish business looking to roll out AI to your team in 2026, there are three legitimate ways to buy training. They look similar from a brochure, slides, exercises, a Q&A, but they are very different in who they're for, what they deliver, and what they cost.
**Skillnet** is the most popular and the most misunderstood. If your company already pays into a Skillnet network, Cork Chamber, IRDG, ISME, DPP, NOTS, Restaurant & Hospitality, and many others, your team can attend a Nomad-delivered AI session for a heavily subsidised fee, often free or under €200 per learner. The trade-off is structural: Skillnet courses are scheduled by the network, run as open cohorts with people from other companies in the room, and use sector-relevant but not company-specific examples. Brilliant for skill uplift across professional development tracks. Not the right shape for confidential workflow training.
**Direct** is what you book when you want training designed around your team's actual work. We pre-read your materials, customise the deck, and run the day around your real workflows, your tender responses, your client documents, your internal Q&A patterns. €1,500 for a half day, €2,500 for a full day, and €3,000 to €3,500 a day for a custom programme written against a specific function or system. In-person at your site or live online. Best for teams of 10 to 25 who want training that translates into Monday-morning behaviour change, not abstract knowledge.
**Executive AI Programme** is the third shape, and it answers a different question. €6,500 for one executive over thirty days, and €4,500 for each additional executive, working on their own decisions rather than a generic curriculum: what to fund, what to ignore, where the realistic 12-month payoff sits. Not a training course in the skill-acquisition sense. Closer to a strategy conversation with the people delivering the work, not consultants who've never shipped AI into a real business.
The thing nobody at a training-procurement meeting says out loud: which format you need depends on what you're actually trying to change. Pure individual skill uplift across the company → Skillnet (subsidised, accessible, sector-flavoured). Team behaviour change in a specific function → Direct (customised, your data, follow-through built in). A leadership decision pending → Executive AI Programme (one leader, thirty days, evidence-led). The wrong format wastes everyone's budget and time. The right one pays back in the first quarter.
If you're not sure which one you need, that's worth a thirty-minute audit conversation before you commit to anything. We'll tell you honestly, and if it's a Skillnet job rather than a Nomad direct engagement, we'll point you at the right network.
