Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be clear, I do not have a problem with businesses making profit. Absolutely not. I believe businesses should make a profit. I am a business person. I do not ever advocate the idea of wholescale censorship or that we should live in a restrictive world. The Internet does good things. My problem with Internet companies is that the harm cannot just be discarded.

Each of our witnesses made their way into work somehow this morning, whether it was by private car, bus or whatever. None of them would one expect the company who made the motor car to make it to the minimum standard, to recall it if there is a problem with it, but not to do all the necessary things to keep our witnesses safe on their journey. The problem with what the Internet companies do is that, if we are honest, they are really publishers who have more impact on the world today than probably all broadcast and print media combined together, which is a terrific compliment to the way the companies have been built up. Yet, for the purposes of making profits, they want to have no obligations to what those impacts are, apart from saying that they will take material down when the damage has been done.

I go back to my central question to our witnesses again. Do the companies believe that at any point that they should accept the principle of being a publisher of material? I ask each of the witnesses to reply in whatever order they like.