Mr. Chris Macey:

Its rule is 13. There is plenty of evidence that children as young as nine sign up to Facebook giving false ages. The effort put into preventing that could be better.

There are several weaknesses in the broadcasting legislation that need to be addressed. Deputy Rabbitte mentioned TV advertising and we know that, despite the regulation, children on average see in excess of 1,000 TV advertisements every year. The limitations are that it works only up to 6 p.m. when 50% of the audience is made up of under 18s. Advertisers can advertise as they wish for big sporting occasions such as the recent rugby matches or Gaelic football matches. Most of the international soccer games are later and the legislation does not apply to them. Children watch many of them.

Children do not watch children's TV. They watch soap operas such as "Fair City" and "Dancing with the Stars", which are completely outside the realms of the legislation. There has been talk about advertising around "The Big Big Movie" that is sponsored by large unhealthy food and drink companies. Brands that sell primarily unhealthy foods can evade the ban by advertising healthier items. For example, if McDonald's has a Happy Meal with carrot sticks, it can advertise the carrot sticks but the message about the Happy Meal might get through. We would like that to be addressed.

There are reams of evidence to show that children are more susceptible to the personalised, targeted digital form of advertising. We know that 15 year olds are online for up to five hours a day on average. Very few parents know what they are doing. I have a 13 year old boy and I have no idea what he is doing online. If I try to find out, and I have tried, it does not work. Parental responsibility is crucial, but it is very difficult for parents to get a sense of what people are doing online. For our research parents were interviewed about unhealthy food marketing on digital media. At the start they were fairly relaxed and did not think it was a big deal, but when the tactics were explained to them, particularly the use of sports stars who are promoting products they would never use themselves because of their fitness requirements, they start to get angry. They were especially angry about the tagging in of friends, getting children to advertise unhealthy food to their friends. It is very clever and well thought through, and we need to address it.