Mr. T. J. McIntyre:

Deputy Noel Harrington inquired as to how we might protect those persons who did not have the resources necessary to bring a High Court action. One of the approaches which might be taken as a model is that taken in the United Kingdom in which there is a Safer Internet Centre. This centre is really just an informational resource, but it provides people with a one-stop-shop where they can indicate they have been abused or bullied online. It then provides them with guidance on how they can access the remedies that might be available. It might, for example, show them how to use a blocking function or the reporting function on systems such as Facebook. If the office for Internet safety is to develop a role, I would like it to move towards emulating that model.

Deputy Noel Harrington's point overlapped somewhat with that made by Deputy Ann Phelan on this being rather low-level crime. That is an important point in the sense that we are possibly misleading ourselves by focusing on criminal prosecutions and the role of international borders. What is often involved is localised bullying and there is not necessarily an international dimension. In fact, there is not necessarily even a criminal dimension because many of the cases about which we are talking involve children. It is very unlikely, as a matter of practicality, that juveniles will ever be prosecuted, even for criminal offences they may commit in this context. Those of us who are parents would not want children to obtain criminal records for ill-judged tweets they might have issued one night. We might be better served by focusing more on concrete examples of abuse rather than on some of the hypothetical issues which do not necessarily arise.

Deputy Ann Phelan also inquired whether there was a case to be made for the establishment of a body similar to the Press Council to monitor social media. We already have such a thing in the individual complaint resolution systems set up within the likes of Facebook, boards.ie, YouTube and so on. All of these entities operate their own complaint resolution services. I can see merit in having a one-stop-shop, but if one were established, it would threaten the diversity that is extremely important. Ultimately, we are discussing online communities which operate to different standards. Some of these communities are very family-friendly in nature and enforce certain standards in respect of identity. I refer, for example, to Facebook. Others such as Twitter are much more open and freewheeling and allow users to remain anonymous. There are still others which are much more vitriolic and I daresay politics.ie falls into that category. We do not want a one-size-fits-all solution which would, in effect, try to impose a single set of standards on all of these disparate organisations.

The UK Safer Internet Centre might be more useful as a front-end to those individual complaint resolution mechanisms, rather than having a separate body which would adjudicate on complaints about all of the different communities. Ultimately, the governance of each individual Internet community should be, in the first instance - if it does not break the law - a matter for the community itself.

Deputy Ellis also made a point regarding prior filtering or monitoring, by analogy with the practice carried out in England for many years - which may still continue - of monitoring all telephone calls from Ireland and looking for certain suspicious keywords. This is governed by European law. Article 15 of the e-commerce directive provides that we may not impose a general duty to monitor on Internet service providers. This means that the law may not, for example, require the likes of YouTube to pre-moderate every video before it goes up or, for example, implement a keyword filtering system before a video goes live. That said, there is nothing to stop an individual provider from choosing to do that if it wishes. For example, Facebook would certainly be entitled to monitor public posts for bad language, if it wished, and block those posts. Again, I suggest that this is really a matter for the community norms within each organisation rather than a one-size-fits-all legislative solution.

Mr. Crehan will address the remaining points.