John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms McSweeney for her very good presentation and for explaining many points. She concentrated on the positive and enriching aspects of Twitter and mentioned the importance of safety. We are present to discuss the safe use of Twitter. It is a question of striking a balance between the safe use of the platform and allowing people to choose how they use it.

Another reason we are present is that the world has been playing catch-up legislatively and otherwise since social media became available. Since social media exploded onto the scene, is Twitter also playing catch-up with regard to its procedures and means of dealing with complaints and the removal of offensive material? Has Twitter modified its approach and fine-tuned it since it had to deal with the issue in question? Certainly, the rest of the world has.

Ms McSweeney said one may make a complaint. How quickly are complaints dealt with or responded to?

Regarding the bullying issue, which is a major worry, I would have to disagree with what Deputy Dooley said earlier in the sense that bullying has certainly always existed but the potential of the medium of Twitter for bullying is immense. As a former teacher I can say that bullying in a school yard or classroom was visible and detectable and it was possible to deal with it. The difficulty with cyberbullying is that it is often silent, invisible and does not stop at 4 p.m. when school finishes and how to deal with that is the issue.