Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and the members of the committee for inviting me to appear before them. In so far as I know this is the first committee of the House that has sought to address this relatively new phenomenon. My colleagues in the Department and I will be very interested to see the conclusions of the committee's deliberations. We will also be interested to hear first-hand from the other stakeholders who will also appear before the committee. It is not a road we have been down before and we are looking forward to hearing what they have to say in response to questioning from Members of the Oireachtas.

The arrival of social media has presented us with a complex, exciting and multifaceted sector, which holds within it the potential to fundamentally change the world we inhabit. However, it also brings its own challenges, as we all know. In the simplest possible terms, social media are online platforms that allow people create, share and exchange information, and to comment among themselves in virtual communities and networks. Moreover, they have been around, in one form or other, for more than 20 years.

In the past five or six years, however, the technology has self-evidently reached critical mass and emerged as a mainstream phenomenon. Due to the fact that it is so new and dynamic, it is far too soon to tell what the actual implications will be but it is already a very safe bet that this revolution, and this is what it is, will have consequences for every human being on the planet. Given the wide range of devices and apps by which we can access social media, it is sometimes easy to forget that what has enabled this revolution is widespread and affordable Internet access. This is fitting because after all, the ancestor of the Internet was designed and built to facilitate research and development by scientists in distant facilities – to allow them to share information and experiences.
From its genesis, the Internet was used to create online virtual communities. This ability to bring people together at distance and to facilitate collaboration, learning, debate and discussion is precisely that which makes social media so compelling today, so useful and such a positive experience for so many people. Social media are used for everything now. Farmers use them to discuss crop husbandry and prices, software developers discuss code and fans discuss film, books or the match last night. Social media are everywhere, thanks to Internet-connected mobile devices. They are also a massively powerful educational tool – providing a recursive element to the previously "one way" relationship between information providers and recipients. At the highest level, social media have the power to be profoundly transformative – fundamentally disruptive to existing patterns of debate, existing political discourse and existing media. Democracy has always evolved and changed along with technology. These technologies have provided citizens with a new set of tools to engage with politics and vice versa. This is something to be welcomed and embraced, not feared.

However, the novelty and power of this technology brings challenges as well - right across the legal, social and personal spectrum. The same power that allows information to be shared in a free and open way also confers the ability to abuse, bully and harass others, sometimes under the cloak of anonymity. Equally, some people have yet to fully appreciate that public messages on social media have the same legal character as if they were published in a newspaper. Defamation and harassment laws apply online in just the same way as they do offline. Also, there have been experiences all over the world where people have been insulted and bullied using this media and, as we know, we have had extremely unfortunate incidents here along similar lines.

Some of these things have the character of growing pains. As soon as practice evolves and behavioural norms online become embedded, either through education or experience, some of this behaviour will mitigate but there will always be some who are willing to use online media to bully, harass, or demean others. Government needs to be cognisant of the damage that these people can do and be prepared to react in a proportionate manner. Critically, social media or the Internet did not lead to the invention of bullying or harassment. These behaviours existed long before that. However, the nature of the Internet, or at least of many of the sites involved, is such that some aggressors can either hide behind anonymity or are simply braver or less caring about the effects of what they might say from the comfort and safety of their own home. For children, these concerns are particularly critical. The web is their future and social media are their media in a way that older generations will probably never be able to fully comprehend. We must ensure that children are free to make the most positive use possible of the web and that they can take full advantage of the opportunities it offers as an educational and social tool. This will not happen if confidence in the web as a safe space for children is lost in the wider community.

The relative novelty of this area and the pervasive and broad nature of its implications pose significant challenges for governments the world over in terms of coming to terms with it. To date, these media generally have not been subject to a formal regulatory regime akin to that used to regulate traditional radio and television broadcast media, either in Ireland or in other jurisdictions. There is a range of reasons for this even before one considers the challenge of keeping up with the rapidly evolving technologies involved.

The first main reason governance in this area is so complex lies with the fact Internet governance is, and indeed has to be, conducted on a multi-jurisdictional basis. There is very little that countries can do on their own given the international basis of the web. Moreover, the system is largely operated on a multi-stakeholder model, with governments as participants rather than controlling or ordering the process.

The second complicating factor around the governance of social media is the fact that they are, undeniably, media. This is not just due to the activity of traditional media players in using social media or even online media players. Social media themselves are now important media players even when there are no journalists or payment in the picture. They are an integral part of a large and diverse media ecosystem. As such, social media are treated in much the same way as any media, with due consideration given to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in any measure that might impact on them.

The third main reason relating to governance is the breadth of the implications. Many different areas of government are affected by this phenomenon and have an involvement but no single Department or State agency can steer or manage it. As Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, I have policy responsibility for providing a supportive legislative and regulatory environment to facilitate the development of high-quality communications infrastructure and services. However, I do not have sole responsibility for addressing how that infrastructure is used. Responsibility for measures to deal with harassment and abuse online sits with the Minister for Justice and Equality, in much the same way as his Department deals with the same issues in the offline world. To that end, his Department has established an executive agency, the office of Internet safety, that deals explicitly with online safety.

There are solutions to these issues, however. In the first instance, children, parents and teachers all require support in terms of understanding the nature of the threats that can sometimes appear online. The Department of Education and Skills has already done some very positive work in this regard, including the publication of a new action plan on bullying that includes some concrete measures on cyberbullying. The office of Internet safety, which will present before the committee shortly, also has a number of measures in place to this end, which I will leave to it to explain. Non-Government players also have a role – I note particularly the work of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals in this area.

There is also a set of robust legal measures in place for defamation introduced as recently as 2009, which covers online comment. Similarly, section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997 deals with harassment. However, while this Act deals with direct communications with someone, it does not deal with communication about someone and at present is apparently being interpreted in a very narrow sense by the courts.

We have existing mechanisms to deal with the abuse of the postal or telephone systems including the Communications Regulation (Amendment) Act 2007 which introduced measures dealing with the use of the telephone system to send messages which are grossly offensive or indecent, obscene or menacing or for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another person. It appears, however, that there may be a gap in the legislation in that electronic communications infrastructure is not covered by the measures. As such, there is no specific mechanism available to gardaí or the courts to deal with the type of difficulties we have seen.

My Department is considering ways to address any issues. It is not an easy task. There is a delicate balance to be struck between ensuring the constitutional rights of the individual to freedom of speech and access to information are maintained while introducing measures that can deal with abuse in a timely and effective manner. Determining an appropriate threshold for offences to ensure that a slew of vexatious or frivolous complaints do not arise is a challenge. We must be aware of these difficulties and ensure that questions of intent, credibility of threat and degree of menace receive due weight. The experience in other jurisdictions has been that this balance is not easy to strike and we fully intend to give any proposed measures full consideration before implementing them.

I am convinced that it is possible to ensure that people enjoy the full benefits offered by social media in their public and private lives while being protected against harassment and bullying if we remain open to appropriate and sensitive interventions. Interventions must tread the infinitesimally fine line between protecting individuals and ensuring that free speech and free and open debate are preserved. It will be difficult, make no mistake, but it is a balance we must strike again and again in light of new technologies. I look forward to hearing the outcome of the rest of the committee's discussions and will consider any recommendations it makes on the subject. While members will be wary of making sweeping recommendations given the complexity and importance of the area, I am sure they will engage constructively and sensitively with the issues involved. I wish the committee well in its work.