Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I sincerely thank the Ministers for appearing before the committee today. Which of the Ministers present will have responsibility for the digital safety commissioner when that office is established? We need a clear unambiguous answer to that question. The Internet content governance advisory group was constituted in 2013. One of its recommendations was that there would be a specific senior or junior Minister responsible. We need to find out who has political responsibility for online safety.

My second question is for the Minister for Justice and Equality. Assistant Garda Commissioner O'Driscoll, and Mr. Declan Daly appeared before the committee in October. They told us that fewer than 100 Garda personnel were involved in the Garda national protective services bureau and under that the online child exploitation unit. They give us clear figures on the number of personnel, but it amounts to fewer than 100 people, if civilians are included. If we are talking about cybercrime and the protection of children and minors, we need to better resource the Garda national protective services bureau. Having additional numbers there would go a long way to the cause of protecting children effectively.

We were all disgusted by the Horan case. The initial inquiry on that case came from an American intervention on a Gmail account. That set off a chain of events in the investigation. Had that email not come from the authorities in America or had there not been an intervention on that, the Horan case might not have come to light. I speak about resources specifically in that case.

I know the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, is a very strong advocate of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We are all very supportive of the STEM initiatives in the junior and senior cycles and the short courses in the junior cycle. Some parents argue that it is the responsibility of the schools to look after online safety - to teach the children or young adults well so to speak. Insufficient resources are allocated to PDST. We need more resources for PDST because the translational effect is not happening in every school and we need to reach beyond post primary and right down into primary level. We need to educate teachers and make them online safety advocates. We should appoint an online safety advocate in every school or region so that they can deploy a lot of these resources in teaching across regions.