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

The committee needs to probe this with the companies that come before it because I have difficulties with the take-down policy of some companies. These are reputable companies - major corporations. For example, Facebook alone has 1 billion users. Good corporate citizenship ought to mean that they should be prepared, in their host countries, to enter into sensible protocols about, for example, their take-down policy. Some colleagues have told me about a particular case or issue where it was difficult to find anyone in certain companies who would admit to having responsibility for this. What is offensive can be in the eye of the beholder but there are many examples where there is no disagreement between the company and the complainant. In those circumstances there ought to be identifiable access whereby the complainant can have his or her complaint assessed and where the company should act speedily. It would be very interesting to hear the companies' view directly on that question because it is not something that one could practically legislate for, even if one were minded to do so. In any event there are difficulties when one talks about taste and tone and so on. Even if one could address multi-jurisdictional facets of this, one would have great difficulties addressing in law the nuance associated with that.

Deputy O'Mahony is right that it is very difficult to deal with the anonymity issue. As a former teacher himself he is aware that bullying did not come in with the Internet. It has been there since the use of the felt-tip pen on the back of the toilet door and so on, but as he says, under the cloak of anonymity it can be used in a minority of cases to devastating effect. That is one of the difficult issues to deal with.

There is a major court case being heard in Germany around and about the terrain of Deputy O'Mahony's first question and it will be very interesting to see how it is decided. If my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills. were here he would add to that answer by saying that parents have a role in this as well. The teaching profession is very familiar with this issue but parents have a role too.