Ann Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Minister to this meeting. I agree with Deputy O'Donovan in regard to what it is the committee wants to achieve. Perhaps this will become more evident as we hear submissions from other people.

I take the Minister's point that we must steer the middle of the road in this area. On interference with the press, we are lucky in Ireland in that we can do and say almost anything without suffering consequences. This is not the case in many eastern European countries, in whose emerging democracies the Internet is playing a significant part.

Ireland is to the fore in arguing for this, particularly across the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, areas. We are to the forefront in arguing that freedom of the media is paramount and one of the three stools on which democracies are founded. We must be very careful not to stray into the area of trying to over-regulate the media on the Internet. We must deal with new technologies.

This reminds me of the cartoons that used to appear in Punchmagazine in the 1800s, which could be described as the Facebook of its day. We have survived in politics since then and we will survive the Internet as well. We must steer very much to the middle of the road.