Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Sweeney for her presentation and for coming before the committee. As we will take questions from several members before asking her to respond, Ms Sweeney may wish to take a note of the questions.

Yesterday, news broke in respect of Facebook's ongoing investigation into alleged efforts to influence the mid-term elections in the United States. Will Ms Sweeney update the committee on this, including on how Facebook identified the issue and whether it was reported to the FBI?

This is the second time this year that the committee has asked representatives of Facebook to appear before it. The first time was to discuss a case involving Cambridge Analytica and a clear breach of trust. Today, we are dealing with a second breach of trust, for which Ms Sweeney has apologised. I accept her apology and I also note Facebook's welcome intervention in the recent Irish referendum when it suspected political interference through its platform. Notwithstanding that, is it not time that we regulated social media?

Ms Sweeney referred to the Bill proposing the establishment of a digital safety commissioner. The committee earlier agreed to proceed with detailed scrutiny of the Bill and we would welcome an input from Facebook into our deliberations.

Channel 4's "Dispatches" programme showed a clear betrayal by Facebook of its own standards. While we understand that it is not possible to moderate everything uploaded on the Internet, the programme showed cases of illegal, abusive and suspected abusive behaviour where Facebook did not meet its own standards.

Ms Sweeney stated Facebook is carrying out an internal investigation to understand why some actions taken by CPL were not reflective of Facebook's policies and the underlying values on which they are based. In his 2016 memo entitled "The Ugly", Facebook's vice president, Andrew Bosworth, set out that anything that achieves growth for Facebook is de facto good even if it means somebody dies as a result of being exposed to bullies or through a terrorist attack planned using Facebook platforms. There is a clear disconnect between what has come from the top at Facebook and what Ms Sweeney has said here today. I would like her to expand on that point.

There are 7,500 moderators in Facebook who deal with moderation and four clinical psychologists worldwide who are employed to support them. Does Ms Sweeney think that is enough?

I understand from Ms Sweeney's presentation that Facebook does not have an objection, in principle, to a digital safety commissioner but that there are a few issues that need to be worked out.

Will Ms Sweeney bank those questions? I will call Deputy Stanley next.