Ms Niamh Sweeney:

This is a matter the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, brought to our attention at the start of this year. Others have also looked at this. That would necessitate a requirement that any social media account would have to be linked to a public services card or some other official identification. For us to be sure before anybody signs up for the service that he or she is under 13 years of age, we would have to take identification material from every user who signs up for it. In a reply to an earlier question, I mentioned a key principle in data protection law captured in paragraph (c) of article 5 of the general data protection regulation which relates to the notion of data minimisation. It provides that the data that can be gathered is only adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for the purposes of data processing. There are others who might make that case more convincingly to the Deputy than I will. He would say I have other motivations, but he would run into difficulty if there is an insistence that anybody who wants to have a social media account must provide some State-backed identification because of the limitations on us in terms of what we can ask people to use. It is a bit like saying one wants to sign up to buy something online but the vendor insists that one shares one's date of birth with the vendor even though there is no reason the vendor would need that. I understand this is not a simple straightforward area and many people have different views on it.