Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The other area I want to move to is the area of hate speech, abusive commentary and racism. We have all seen live feeds of people going around towns in Ireland, making comments such as "look at all of the black people in this town, isn't this terrible?", and using that in a way to enable the promotion of a certain type of racism. It is almost like the modern version of the Ku Klux Klan has found a new place to operate on the Internet and they seem to be free to do so. Many complaints have been made about several individuals and organisations that engage in that type of behaviour. Very little seems to be happening to address this issue because it is ongoing.

We can look it up right now on the computer. I am sure we will find those people are there livestreaming some commentary which is very racist, abusive and dangerous. I do not understand how the organisations represented here today cannot take responsibility. If they are responsible, they have to extend that responsibility beyond just stating that they will take down such material. It then happens the next day and is taken down, and then the next day and so on.

At what stage does a company reach a point when it accepts that it must go further than simply continually removing the content, and that it needs to be proactive rather than reactive? There seems to be no limit where that line is crossed.