Mr. Colin Larkin:

There is one other issue which is relevant. This is not necessarily a new problem. We have all seen abusive telephone calls and text messages over the years. We can look at expanding this into a global issue of cyberbullying but we need to look back in history to the existing defamation laws. We can help people by providing the infrastructure for them to prepare civil or criminal cases.

Yesterday's Limerick Leader contained a discussion about a school in Limerick. It concerned the challenge the principal had in trying to get a particular post removed. All the information that such a school principal needs to be able to take a civil case, exists within that social network. Today, however, there is no infrastructure that allows that principal to make a complaint to the local Garda Síochána, so they cannot use something equivalent to a lawful intercept which is used on a fixed or mobile telephone network to get the information they need to take a criminal case. If they could do so, they would hold that organisation to account but they do not have the ability to create that case today. All the information exists within the social network, however. We should look back at how we fixed this problem before in terms of mobile telephones and fixed networks concerning text messaging.