Mr. John Church:

I will make a couple of points and will try not to repeat everything. The Deputy makes a very interesting and valid point about traceability and fingerprints. Many intelligent people are able to figure out who we are. I am not about to open the debate on the digital age of consent again, but the big issue we have is that children and young people, by their very nature, lie about their age to get onto these platforms. There needs to be a greater onus on the Facebooks of this world to verify that age. Many 13 year olds want to go into the discos where the 16 year olds are. It is absolutely normal behaviour for children and young people. There should be more of an onus on the companies in that regard. In my opening statement, I made reference to the industry event the ISPCC ran with Technology Ireland, a trade association under IBEC. The industry was present at that event. We talked about the whole concept of safety by design and about encouraging, rather than forcing, platform and app developers to take child safety into consideration in this regard. We talked about the idea of a CE-type mark. That idea came up. To the best of my knowledge, mobile phone operators in the UK are forced to issue phones set up as if they were to be bought by children. There are small measures that could be taken that would play a big part in protecting children.