Mr. John Church:

I thank the committee for inviting us to attend and I thank Deputy Ó Laoghaire for bringing the Bill forward. We welcome the drafting of legislation to establish an office of digital safety commissioner and look forward to its progress.

Online safety is the child protection issue of our day. I would like to share a typical example of a Childline case with the committee. A 15 year old female contacted Childline's web chat service. She stated that she sent nude pictures of herself to her boyfriend and that when they broke up, he sent them to his friends. Now her friends and people in school are talking about her and calling her vile names. She feels really embarrassed, stupid and ashamed. She feels very hurt and betrayed by her ex-boyfriend. She did not think that he would do such a thing. She is terrified that her parents will find out and is scared about how they might react, especially her dad because he is so strict. She is so upset that she wants to kill herself. This example illustrates the fear and isolation children feel when something they do online goes horribly wrong and they perceive that the situation is out of their control to manage.

The ISPCC has been pleased to see the Houses of the Oireachtas take seriously the issue of online safety, with a significant increase in activity in Departments in the past year. We would like to take this opportunity too, to acknowledge the work of the Office for Internet Safety and Webwise and the work they do with limited resources. These structures need to be better resourced to make them more effective and for every parent, child and teacher in the country to become aware of them and embrace their resources and expertise.

The ISPCC broadly welcomed the publication of the Government's first action plan for online safety last July, particularly its provisions in respect of enhanced education measures and proposed law reform. However, the ISPCC expressed its disappointment at the time that the action plan fell short of a commitment to statutory regulation. Not long after the launch of the action plan, and indeed in recent times, the public has been presented with stark examples of self-regulation failing. It is our experience that these failures can impact negatively on children and that there are positive actions that Ireland can take to better protect children online. Notwithstanding the commitment to self-regulation in the action plan, and perhaps to reflect the fast-changing nature of this space, we were delighted to hear the comments of the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, at the committee's detailed scrutiny stage where he stated it was time to move beyond self-regulation and highlighted the need for a regulatory body in the online space.

In 2016, the ISPCC carried out an internal case review of its Childline service and front-line services on the prevalence of online safety issues in our work. The findings of this review, in conjunction with cases in the external environment, led to online safety being an integral part of our policy work, in turn giving us a clear mandate to advocate for change in this area. In February 2017, the ISPCC made a presentation to the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs and shared its experiences regarding online safety issues. These issues included access and exposure to inappropriate content, online grooming and cyberbullying.

Harmful communications among children can be compounded by the fact that they are children and perhaps do not realise the reach their actions can have online. We are in no doubt that online safety is a major issue for children and young people in Ireland.

In 2005 we launched the first text-based support service for children in Ireland. We have seen a shift to our online and text service over the last decade, and we are in the final stages of development of a new online service. The ISPCC has seen the use of its Childline online services jump from just under 4,000 conversations in 2007 to just under 30,000 conversations in 2017. We know that children want us to be online, and to be more accessible to them in the spaces they inhabit. Through listening to and engaging with more than 1,000 children a day on our Childline service we have been able to spot trends over the years and raise these issues in the media and with policy-makers and legislators. Over the past two decades in particular we have seen how children’s technological lives are becoming increasingly embedded in their lives as a whole. The online-offline distinction for children is an unfamiliar concept. Utilising technology and being online are no longer an add-on; it is how and where they live their lives.

Children make up one third of all Internet users globally. One in two users in the developed world is a child. Their participation and protection rights in the digital environment are widely supported across EU laws and policies. Irish policy sets out ambitions for all Irish citizens to be connected and online. ICT is broadly available and its use encouraged in many schools. The Government’s action plan for online safety recognises that children’s specific vulnerability warrants greater protection. The Net Children Go Mobilereport of 2015 found that one in five children in Ireland reported being bothered by something they saw on the Internet in the past. The Internet was not created with children as users in mind, but they use it. We know this, and we all have a role to play in keeping them safe online. Therefore, it is imperative we recognise the need for a regulatory body, with a digital safety commissioner or equivalent, to champion children’s online safety and seek remedies for them when they are unable to do so themselves.

The issue of defining harmful communications has been raised at the various stages of debate on this Bill thus far. It is important that a definition is created to reflect the examples of harmful communications referred to in the Law Reform Commission’s report and elsewhere, and not be overly broad so as to render the definition unworkable and, in effect, useless.

While some of the suggested work of a digital safety commissioner is being carried out across other Departments and structures, we feel there is merit in co-ordinating this work in order to maximise its efforts and impacts for all concerned, under an office of the digital safety commissioner, or equivalent.

Children have a right to be protected, and this protection extends to being online. Being online is the public space where children frequent the most. They converse with their friends there, keep in touch with family there and shop there. It is their go-to place for information, and, like any public space, it should afford them similar safety protections.