Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. The commercial premise on which social media are based is to get the names of people and their data and advertise to them. This is how they get a commercial return. Given this is the case, obviously the onus on their side is to make the data available and attractive and use it as effectively as possible and attract advertisers. In this context, will Ms Dixon go through what she thinks of the current situation? The people watching us today will be interested to know as of today how an individual can protect his or her data. What specific steps can people take? Are there sufficient opportunities for people who might not be very technologically competent to protect their personal data and clearly know to do it? I am not sure there is an awareness there. How does Ms Dixon think we could improve on what is there now? I know legislation is pending to deal with fake accounts. Fake accounts are very serious and all of us in this room have been adversely affected at certain times by people using fake accounts to disseminate falsehoods or false arguments. Does Ms Dixon think the legislation will be sufficiently adequate in this regard? It is a very important protection for democracy and for individuals.

Ms Dixon made the point that access to data in the United States is much more easily obtained and Europe is not bad in this regard, in terms of what could happen with the elections in Europe. Will Ms Dixon elaborate a bit more as to how watertight the European situation is and how confident could we be in an Irish electoral setting? When we have an election in Ireland, how confident can we be, based on what Ms Dixon has said about the European model?