Professor Joe Carthy:

Absolutely. The offence mentioned by the Deputy is at the very serious end, but there are a host of offences at the less serious end which could be dealt with. Many people post because they are anonymous and can say whatever they wish about individuals. I am sure committee members are familiar with this. The people in question would not make the posts if they could be identified and there was some regulation that allowed their identification. Also, it would be appropriate for every company to have a take-down mechanism such that a person's first port of call would be the company to tell it that there is material on its platform about him or her and that he or she wants it to be taken down immediately before he or she would have recourse to a commission or something like it. The commission should have a mechanism to do this quickly. If the company did not respond, someone's next port of call would be the e-commissioner. The companies have the money to put these facilities in place and it should be part of their process.