Ms Niamh Sweeney:

We refer to it as our authentic identity policy. A person must go by the name that his or her friends and family would recognise that person by in real life. If a person is operating under a name that is clearly fake or not related to what he or she would operate under in day-to-day life, somebody reports it and it looks suspicious to us, then we will check that account and ask that person to provide identification. If the person cannot provide it, he or she will lose access to the account. That is how fake names are handled. I am sorry that has been Deputy Funchion's experience. We work hard to remove those accounts because we find that they are linked to much of the behaviour that violates our policies. With respect to material that amounts to lying about individuals, all Irish citizens are protected by several statutes, including those that relate to defamation and harassment. If it goes into defamatory territory, then we have specified reporting tools for people to be able to take action on that and we will always work with the courts to ensure people have access to recourse in that sense.

When one talks about bullying that goes on for years, there is obviously recourse for individuals if it escalates to harassment, and these are captured by existing statutes. We rely on notice from our user community to take action on much of what has been described. When the Deputy talks about photographs that have been doctored to degrade individuals, we can take action once they are reported to us, but as Ms Cummiskey said, 2 billion people use the platform which generates a lot of content, so the legal framework for this, which has been set out by the EU, is called a notice and takedown system. Once we are notified about something, we have a responsibility to respond expeditiously, which is what we strive to do. In a situation in which we are not notified, there is no artificial intelligence which can reveal those kinds of examples. Perhaps Ms Cummiskey or Ms de Bailliencourt will add to that.