Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms McSweeney and thank her for her useful presentation. I declare an interest in that I am a user of Twitter. I find the service exceptionally useful and a fantastic advance in terms of an individual's capacity to self-publish, albeit using a restricted number of characters. It has changed the way in which many of us communicate, comment on and engage in public debate and discourse.

I am somewhat amused at the level of attention that is being given to bullying on the social media. I say this because bullying has always been a feature of life in every jurisdiction. One only needs to cast one's mind back to one's school days to recall how people were bullied. We were all bullied in some respect, whether on the school bus, in the school yard or elsewhere. It is not a new phenomenon. We now have unwarranted hype and panic because Twitter is a new medium. The vast majority of bullying is done face to face, with some of it done anonymously over the telephone. No one suggests we should haul in all the telephone companies to figure out how they will prevent someone from taking my telephone number and calling me from a call box in the centre of town. People also write anonymous letters to bully others.

If we are serious about bullying, we should be focusing on it rather than the channel by which the bully seeks to ply his or her trade. Twitter and Facebook are relatively upfront because one can see what is being said. There are times when some of the comments may be derogatory or defamatory, and the law in this regard has been outlined by the delegates. Yesterday, the Minister stated there is recourse to the law. Much of the commentary to date has been on the difficulty posed because much information is published outside the State. If information published outside the State is transmitted here, there is recourse to the Irish courts.

I wonder about the direction of the commentary. We need to begin to consider the management of children in school and to examine the education system. Twitter, of itself, is not the problem; it is not the bully. We must be careful not to limit, damage or inhibit in any way the growth of Twitter or other social media, or undermine their importance.

I fully accept the point made on anonymity, which is fundamental to social media. I can see how it has the potential to be abused by some and I accept that there are strong policies on how abuse might be curtailed.

Has Ms McSweeney any view on the capture of data? I accept that companies should retain the data for themselves and nobody else, and that it should not be shared. If somebody is found to have set up a false account or uses an anonymous name, does Twitter still require that person to provide data or information that would allow him or her to be identified? I refer to rare circumstances in which one is found to be very much in breach not only of Twitter's guidelines but also of the defamation laws, for example. Is there a fail-safe backup resource such that if the law enforcement agents ask that the identity of an individual with an anonymous account be made known, they can be facilitated, provided the account holder is breaking all the rules and is in serious breach of jurisdictional provisions or laws?