Mr. Ronan Lupton:

I wish to make a couple of points. The first is that the law is going to shift in any event in terms of the e-commerce package. The committee may need to do very little other than to lay a statutory instrument before the House in the usual way for secondary legislation to come through.

The second point is in response to the question on whether we can achieve our ends without legislating. I think the answer is "No". Part 3 of my witness statement deals with a number of civil and criminal statutes that are out of date and they need to be overhauled in terms of language, offences and remedies such as civil applications and sanctions. Unfortunately, there is no avoiding that job of work. In response to the Chairman's question, we do not need to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but, to take up Dr. McIntyre's earlier point, if the law that is on the Statute Book was enforced and resources were given to the agents of the State to do what they do so well, but with additional learning and resources, we might be better as a society if we just deployed what is there. There is that conundrum between upgrading and updating and then enforcing what is on the Statute Book and enabling the Garda.

There has been a sea change in the Garda force since the new Commissioner came in, and there is a new impetus in respect of education and training. It will be good to see gardaí who do the beat on the street also able to grapple with these issues on the doorsteps. I am sorry for harping back to the LRC report and the ICGAG report, but there is a space for the State to intervene to provide a one-stop shop by means of civil recourse. It will never be criminal recourse, but it may assist funnelling to State agencies to deal with criminal sanctions in the form of a digital safety commissioner or a national Internet safety advisory group, an actual body set up on a statutory basis with a commissioner or set of commissioners that could then bring in codes of conduct or we could have a legislative basis for codes of conduct to bring the platforms to the table and say: "Your community standards do not work lads. We need to fix them." I am sorry for being colloquial in my expression. That is how we could go.

The Chairman's question is a very good one. We could enforce the current laws, let the legislators work on updating those laws insofar as they are not incompatible with the European frameworks. Going back to Senator Conway's question, the Oireachtas can work as hard as it can, centrally, to make sure that the package that comes forward on the e-commerce side suits and is fit for purpose, without interfering with the good parts of the Internet. I know that is a problem. There are good parts. I hope, then, we will have societal change. Unfortunately, legislation takes time and that is the reality of it. That is my position.