Ms Siobhán Cummiskey:

I thank the committee for having us here today and reiterate our apology for the failings we saw in the "Dispatches" programme. I reassure people that we are here to speak about that, explain it and follow up where we see those failings. I will start with Deputy Stanley's question around the responsibility we take in terms of child related content. To reiterate the words of my colleague, Ms Sweeney, we take a zero-tolerance approach to child sexual abuse content and we work with image matching technology to ensure that known child abuse images can never be re-uploaded to the system. They are called child exploitation images, so any known child exploitation images cannot be re-uploaded to the system. We work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US to do that.

With regard to the content of the "Dispatches" programme, I reiterate that we were very concerned by what we saw. This type of content is very upsetting and disturbing. I will explain to the committee how we approach this type of content. When it comes to child physical abuse, in the vast majority of circumstances the content is deleted. It is not just deleted as we also use image matching technology to ensure it is never re-uploaded. In a very narrow and limited set of circumstances, we will allow that content where the child is still at risk and there is a possibility of the child being brought to safety.

In that circumstance, we will take two actions. First, we will age gate and provide a warning screen on that content. Second, we will provide that content to our internal law enforcement response team to see if they can identify where it has come from and if they can contact local law enforcement.

Since the programme, that policy has been under review and we have started a broad consultation on the potential changing of that policy. In that consultation, we will meet law enforcement and child safety organisations. In fact, we have already met An Garda Síochána to discuss that policy and get their very useful feedback and insights on same.

People use Facebook for many reasons. The majority of people who come to Facebook use it for very positive things, share very positive things and use Facebook to connect with their family and friends. A small number of people try to abuse our platform, which we take very seriously and we will take action against them where it is brought to our attention.

On the matter of people who are under 13 years of age, we use a number of indicators. Deputy Stanley asked how Facebook identifies if somebody is under the age of 13. We use a number of indicators. For example, we will look at the images that they have uploaded to see if we can tell whether they have lied about their age and are under 13 years of age. We also look at the images of their friends to see if there are indications there. We also see if, perhaps, some of their friends and contacts have had their accounts removed for being under age. There are a variety of different factors and indicators that go into that.

As Ms Sweeney has said, one of the remedies that we have put in place since the "Dispatches" programme is that we have made sure to put a hold on any account that we believe belongs to a person who is under 13 years of age to be reported for any reason. Also, anyone on or off Facebook can report an account to us as belonging to a person under 13 years of age.