Mr. Ronan Costello:

People who disagree with an original tweet that they find distasteful or offensive are creating a consensus of solidarity around the opposing point of view. This notion of counter-speech has been established for several years now. As Ms White referenced earlier, we have been part of the EU code of conduct around illegal hate speech. Indeed, in January this year, we held a workshop in the office which was participated in by the council, the Commission and a range of non-governmental organisations, NGOs, from across Europe. The purpose of that was to create a counter-speech campaign that would be rolled out across Europe and would reject hate speech and encourage people to take an alternative view. At the early part of that workshop, we had attendees who were a part of successful referendum campaigns in Ireland in the past few years. They talked about how they had promoted a positive and inclusive narrative in Irish society by creating counter-narratives around conversations that could have taken an altogether negative turn.