Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The bottom line is that for legislators it is hard to know what way to go on this. We want to help parents and we have a duty to protect children. We do not want to have too much of a nanny state approach. There is a fine line for us to navigate. We are relying on experts like the witnesses and those who appeared before the justice committee to tell us where to go with this.

As this is my final chance, I will probably have to squash a few points into it. As legislators, we must make laws for the worst case scenarios, and we have heard many of them in the media recently. There was an awful case highlighted in the past number of weeks where paedophiles were grooming children. I have a friend who is a doctor and she told me about a very difficult case where a parent presented to her. The couple were having problems, which happens all the time, and perhaps they were not focused. They discovered through looking at a device that their child had been sending pictures to a paedophile. The child was only looking for love and affection in reaching out. I know it is not happening all the time and there are so many positive aspects to the Internet - I cannot emphasise that enough - but we must do something about this as legislators.