Dr. T.J. McIntyre:

Much of what we talk about is really an issue not so much about what rules should apply, because the rules are in place, but about access to justice and getting those rules enforced. The point made by Mr. Lupton some minutes ago about the adequacy of responses by social media companies to a large extent is one about their mechanisms for responding to and evaluating reports. Criminalising conduct means getting the Garda involved in some cases. Often, it is not about achieving a criminal justice outcome. Often, it is about people getting in touch with a social media company. In turn, this causes the social media company to take the matter seriously and properly evaluate the content, something the company might not have done previously. To some extent that might answer the question from Senator Ó Donnghaile. If there is greater Garda enforcement, we might get the desired result to take down certain material without it necessarily progressing to criminal justice enforcement.

Are there other ways of doing that? It might be that if we can incentivise companies to act more speedily on complaints of criminal material, we can get that result. That is permissible under the existing legal framework. Germany has the so-called network enforcement law, or netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, which provides for significant fines on companies that fail to take down certain types of content, including extremist content or content promoting terrorism, promptly once notified by a state body. It is a graduated duty and it applies for the most part to firms that have more than 2 million users. It aims not to hinder innovation in the way mentioned earlier by Deputy Conway by imposing too great a duty on smaller providers. Essentially, it is limited to providers operating at scale. That model could certainly be used but it is a model which, to my knowledge, has not really been considered in the Irish debate so far. It may be premature to adopt that model now when the European landscape is so fluid at the moment.