Mr. Ronan Lupton:

I wish to underpin Dr. McIntyre's points. Earlier, I touched on the issue of community standards and rules. Senator Ó Donnghaile made a point about how the longevity of information maintained on a platform could have damaging consequences in both a civil and criminal law context. I guess from that point of view we may consider bringing forward codes of conduct. I am sorry to use the expression, because I do not believe self-regulation has worked the way it should have, but codes of conduct to which platform providers sign up nationally may work. There may be some form of punishment or sanction if they fail to do things that are properly reported and adequately assigned to them by some State intervenor or actor. We could let them sign up to that. Ultimately, it is in their interests to come to the table with solutions and suggestions. Maybe they have with their submissions to the committee.

It is fair to say that the law is in place already, as Dr. McIntyre has said. Is it being enforced properly in a criminal context? No, because we know there are resourcing issues. On the civil side of the house, it is expensive and costly. It takes time to go to court to do these things. Fundamentally, we have only to see the recent clarification on the position in terms of hosting and content and whether injunctions can go a certain way in terms of innocent publication and so forth. Again, it is in my witness statement but I want to underpin the point. Really, the platforms should come to us and suggest we bring in a given model of behaviour to which they sign up and, if they do not, a sanction applies.

That might not be done legislatively but, rather, by way of a code of contact. There are examples within the GDPR in the devising of future codes. I will not get into the debate on that particular turf, but, certainly, it is up to the platform providers to show good behaviour. There is a problem or strain in terms of the community assessment issue, where it is completely out of sync with national law.