Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Laoghaire for the Bill. This issue is part of the Government's digital strategy and we are keen to work with the committee in this area. I have a little experience in this area from the work I was doing in the Department of Education and Skills. For example, we required all schools to consult parents regarding the use of smartphones in schools. Some 87% of primary schools have policies of absolute disallowance. Others have some form of usage restriction. There are differing practices. Some schools have developed codes that cover not only in-school usage but the attitude of parents to the ownership and use of smartphones among their children. That consultation will give us some idea of the direction parents and school communities want to go in this area.

Deputy Ó Laoghaire raised several points. We have been active in the area of developing materials through www.webwise.ie, which is part of our continuing professional development section of the Department. This involves developing materials that can be used in the classroom by students as well as teachers. We are keen to use students as ambassadors for improving people's resilience to deal with some of the experiences they have had with social media.

Their work is particularly innovative. It is supported by the European Union.

One of the major initiatives in the Government's plan was to set up an interdepartmental group which is being chaired by the Department of Education and Skills. I attended its first meeting to emphasise the importance of working across the silos and developing a coherent response. As the committee is probably aware, the action plan has a range of goals around online safety for all groups, better supports, stronger criminal protections and better arenas for influencing policy. In that context, it set up an advisory council which involves people right across the sector helping to guide Government in the development of a strategy. It has many valuable initiatives, of which I am sure the committee is aware, such as having a single access point, equipping teachers, the curriculum and so on around the school, developing supports in the arena of mental health and the new criminal offences which are not part of this Bill but are being developed and which I believe are also part of a Labour Party Bill. There is very strong momentum now for implementing change in the digital safety arena.

Turning to this Bill, I agree with Deputy Ó Laoghaire that it is time to move beyond self-regulation in this area but we have to make sure that whatever we do is robust and workable. My understanding of this area in the context of the European Union is that there are different levels of regulation. It has not yet addressed the take-down issue but where it has addressed regulation it has different dimensions of regulation. In the audiovisual area, for example, it envisages regulation that would involve the oversight of a code of practice but not taking on third party complaints. Clearly, the idea of having third party complaints is probably integral to what the Deputy is proposing and I can see the sense in that. However, the other models would have ensured that the codes, as the Deputy said, some of which are good and some of which are bad, would be overseen. In other words, somebody would be riding shotgun on the companies in terms of their implementation of their codes whereas this model goes a step beyond that and says that where there are disputes that are unresolved, they would be arbitrated upon. That is the context in which it is probably important to have one's definitions right if one goes from having general oversight of codes to having third party arbitration with respect to what is it one will have arbitration upon. That probably needs to be spelt out. I note that the Deputy is working on this. As I understand it, what he spelt out were largely criminal offences. He seems to be envisaging that the take-down power would be in regard to matters that were already unlawful. There is an issue that probably needs to be teased through and I will be asking the Attorney General to help us tease through this. If we introduce powers for a body, a data digital safety commissioner, to require take-down of material in areas where something is illegal, there is also the issue that the Garda will be examining illegal activities and working to ensure they are taken down. In that category we will need to examine what is the relationship with the Garda and the investigation it might be doing. I understand the companies would have strict liability if they leave up something that is illegal that would expose them to liability, whereas if we move beyond the illegal ones to another category - which I understand has been done in Australia where they have defined other areas such as cyberbullying which would be short of something that is illegal but is nonetheless undesirable and should be taken down - we need to decide what is the realm within which we are working. That is one of the issues on which I am very happy to get advice from our own legal people as to how we would define that range and to make sure that if we are envisaging, as the Deputy is, take-down rights in regard to matters that are illegal already, that what we, or the digital safety commissioner, would be doing would not interfere with the Garda investigation, prosecution and so on. I am not saying that is insuperable but there is an issue to be addressed there. While I recognise the work the Deputy is doing on those issues, clearly some more work needs to be done. Like the Deputy, I am not an expert on what the extraterritorial effect might be. The Deputy said he would work with whatever advice we get from the Attorney General. Our officials will be coming back to the committee later and, hopefully, we will have some more advice for it at that point.

In some ways that is the most core function of the Deputy's Bill. It refers to most of these functions around paragraphs (c), (d), (e) of section 3 and so on. We need to do some more work on that but moving away from self-regulation is absolutely right. Let us define the scope of it and decide on how the third party complaint is defined and proceeded with.

With respect to the wider sections of the Deputy's Bill, we need to think more clearly about what it is we are trying to achieve. The Government has established an interdepartmental committee where each person represented on that committee has the functions and powers to execute change. We strongly believe in all of these areas that we need to ensure that it works across the silos, and we are creating that momentum to work across the silos. We are also creating an outside advisory body to input into and critique what is being done within Government.

I would ask the Deputy to consider what added value would occur with respect to someone who had a co-ordination role on top of that structure. The structure that is now in place will report back to a Cabinet committee and will have Ministers judging if this is being proceeded with quickly enough, if we are doing the right things or do we need to add new measures to the action plan. That is a tried and established tier of power, authority and execution. Where a digital co-ordinator would fit into that is open to question. To take the example of the education area, if the Deputy is saying the digital commissioner should become the driver of educational change, is he saying that the Professional Development Service for Teachers, PDST, or Webwise would transfer to the office of the digital commissioner from the Department of Education and Skills, which the Department would consider is its natural home? The work of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the PDST, the continuing professional development agency within the Department of Education and Skills is a co-ordinated and effective structure for designing, delivering and executing education content to improve people's digital safety online. Does the Deputy envisage a research capacity whereby the digital safety commissioner could ask had they thought of that or should they be thinking of something else? However, for those people to be co-ordinating when they do not the power structure creates a danger that we have someone with a parent responsibility without the tools to execute, whereas the Cabinet committee, the interdepartmental group driving to implement the changes and the advisory committee have a structure that has been thought out and it is designed to get maximum impact in this area by driving across Government activity, forcing Departments to work across the silos and to work to agreed goals set by Government, with report-back responsibility to the Cabinet committee. It is a structure I have certainly seen work from my experience when I was working in the employment area. I would not have been advocating then for creating a tsar for employment outside of those structures because I would be questioning its capacity.

I am not sure joined-up research is being carried out across the system. Perhaps this strategy needs to think more clearly about research. Presumably, that will evolve from the work of the advisory committee working into the structure that is being put in place in government. The committee ought to think seriously about taking many of these roles out of a structure we put up. It is there and I am sure members have read it but as far as I can remember, there are 50 actions here. They are quarterly and 25 of them relate to this year. There are about 60 next year. The horse is in motion and the train is moving and has gone out of the station. A good deal of work is being delivered. I ask members to think about that dimension of the Bill. I would certainly have some misgivings about whether it would add value to what is being done. That is not to say we should not be critiqued for what is being done. The advisory group will be there to critique, as will the Dáil and the Seanad.

That is really it. There are some technical things there that must be worked through. We will get advice from the Attorney General so that when officials come back - I am only a week in the job myself and do not pretend to be right about all these issues - they will come back if there are technical and legal issues that need to be teased out as the committee proceeds. I thank the Deputy for the Bill. I see the value in moving away from self-regulation and accept that we need to design a structure that is effective in this area but we do not want to create something in these other areas that may not add to the effectiveness of an Internet safety strategy that is well under way. When this was launched, we recognised that this is a dynamic area that keeps changing. We need that advisory committee and to scan the horizon to ensure that what we are doing is effective as the threats change.