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

We think there may be a gap in the law with respect to the inclusion of telephone and SMS identifiable abuse and the exclusion of Internet technologies from the remit of that legislation. That may well be something that could be teased out in some detail by the committee.

The issue of anonymity is very complex, and it was raised by Deputies Kenny and O'Mahony. This is before coming to the very tough question from Deputy O'Donovan. It is possible to get a court order to require a service provider to make the identity of the person who posted the offensive material known. Deputy O'Donovan raises the pertinent question that gets to the heart of the matter, which is that the court system is like the Ritz in that it is "open" to everyone. That is a significant issue.

The print media has addressed the issue through the construction of the Press Council of Ireland and the press ombudsman, which has worked quite well. It provides protection to the media, rooted in the Defamation Act, and it provides protection from enormous damages. Some 90% of complainants want speedy apologies, retractions etc., which is provided by this route rather than going through the court system. Could we see a day when new social media would come under the kind of arrangements in place for the print media? It is not beyond the bounds of possibility and there are areas of the most well-established and respected elements of new media, some of which have made application to the Press Council of Ireland to be included. The area could be examined.

Deputy Phelan raises the questions of incitement to hatred, racial abuse, etc. The law applies in that respect but I do not have an easy answer to Deputy O'Donovan's question about how easy it is to vindicate one's rights in this country. Access to the court system is prohibitively expensive for some citizens and the discussion is wider than the subject matter before us today. It may well be that there are some mechanisms short of the full court system that would allow speedy redress to most complainants.

That returns us to the point about take-down policy. If there was a working protocol in place where the complainant knew precisely where to go, and if the material was objectively offensive or hurtful etc., it would meet a fair measure of the complaints.