Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be problematic to codify an offence of harmful communications in general. We need to come up with a definition of harmful communications for this module. Dr. McIntyre has outlined that he looked for a definition of harm in the Law Reform Commission's report, but did not find one. It may be that the commission experienced the same difficulty we will have and decided to identify several actions that were clearly harmful such as threatening or false messages, harassment, stalking or intimate images. That is how it dealt with it in the report. Mr. Lupton's point is that if we are to legislate, we need to define what is harmful.