Ms Patricia Cronin:

I will respond to the Chairman's questions about the policy area and the Office of the Attorney General. My colleague, Ms Quill, will answer the Chairman's questions about engagement and cover off the Australian e-commissioner angle.

As the Chairman has rightly said, the role of the Minister and the Department is to look at the policy context at national and European levels. Our job is to set legislation in a broad policy context. There are many examples of areas in which external implementation bodies have been established. There is a great deal of European legislation. Reference has been made to the audiovisual media services directive, which is coming down the tracks for us. When that is finalised at the end of this month, our job will be to consult on the online safety aspects of the directive and on the co-regulation of video-sharing platforms. We will look at what the Commission has set out and we will work with the Minister to figure how that will be transposed.

I will set out the choices here. We must choose to have either secondary or primary legislation. We have to decide what the national regulatory authority will be. We have not made up our minds on that. We will have to speak to the Minister. He will make that decision. That will be an important component of this process. We will also have to decide how we will transpose the requirements of the regulation. That is broadly how we will do things in this area.

Many speakers have alluded to the fact that there are many players in the area of online safety. The Department of Justice and Equality has a role in respect of any content that relates to terrorism. It manages the transpositions in that area. The Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation has a role in respect of e-commerce. The online world is fairly complicated. The broad policy context is certainly put in place by Government Departments.

I can tell the Chairman in response to her second question that the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, who is still relatively new in the job, asked us to write to the Office of the Attorney General to get its advice on certain aspects of the Bill. As Deputy Ó Laoghaire has recognised, some of it is quite complicated. We have sought the advice of the Office of the Attorney General on aspects of the Bill that have been mentioned, including the definition of a "digital service undertaking".

We have considered how it interacts with the e-commerce directive and how matters involving entities outside the State would be enforced. We have sought advice from the Office of the Attorney General in that regard but will have to ask it whether such advice could be shared as matters such as legal privilege must be considered. We are happy to ascertain whether the advice may be shared and will revert to the committee in that regard.