Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Given the age profile of those in the profession, it is clear that over the past few years they have received direct training. I suppose there are some who have been in the profession longer who may not have been subject to that. I take and accept entirely Mr. Weir's point.

I have a question for Ms Niculescu. On participation and involvement, I suppose it is critical that the likes of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms play a role in ensuring that children are not subjected to certain imagery. A concern I would have is one only ever hears negatives about Facebook's policy, for instance, on nudity. We have heard some amusing anecdotes about individuals posting photographs that have been banned when, in fact, they should not have been because there was nothing to it and then there is the opposite side of it when one has a small child sitting with an iPad, phone or tablet in his or her hand who is inadvertently coming across items that really the child should not. ISPs obviously have a role to play, not in terms of what Ms Niculescu and Deputy Neville pointed out that it is not necessarily about banning the sources of those images when they are legal but in trying to ensure that the social media platforms are being responsible in the types of information that they allow up on their websites. I was quite taken aback recently when reading about bots - I refer to Twitter bots. If one randomly tweets something and one uses particular words, all of a sudden I have noticed I start getting followed by peculiar bots, the vast majority of which are sexual services related. It is not that I am posting strange things. I am a public representative. It is all there - one can read it. One gets a lot of that and I find it very strange.

There is also a considerable amount of advertisements from betting companies. I am not a betting man. If one is dealing with a child a betting company is not that important but they are obviously using algorithms that are targeting people. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility or opportunity for some of those advertisers to target young people. I suppose my question for Ms Niculescu, given her expertise in the area, is this: How important are social media platforms in terms of the avoidance of online sexting, children participating in things that they should not do and exposure to grooming and-or other experiences, and what role do policy-makers have in ensuring that such behaviour is eradicated, particularly in the likes of Twitter? Somebody would have to show me figures on the exposure of children under the age of 16 to Twitter - I would say it is not probably not as high as it is above that age - but other platforms, such as Facebook, have an important role to play in this.