Mr. Ian Power:

Fundamentally, we believe the offence must be firmly placed on the Statute Book in order for people, particularly young people, to have an ability to seek redress. I wholeheartedly take the point made by Ms Farries that young people need access to supports such as legal aid to engage in the redress process.

The Deputy asked about the liability of companies. We live in the real world.

From our perspective, there is a pragmatic response in these circumstances. At present, under the e-commerce directive, the responsibility of platforms begins when they are notified of a piece of content. We would broaden that to provide that they also have a responsibility to be proactive. To pick up on the point made by Professor O'Higgins Norman, we are not greatly concerned about some of the larger platforms; we are concerned about platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok that have not engaged and are continuing to refuse to engage. From our perspective, such services are overwhelmingly used by young people. There needs to be an onus on such platforms to engage in proactive measures, such as hashing of images that have been shared, to prevent their resharing. When we think about closed and encrypted spaces, we appreciate that encryption is set to proliferate further across all platforms. The first point we would make from our perspective is that this approach can only work in circumstances in which platforms become responsible when they are notified. We have seen a number of cases in which a significant takedown response has not been initiated by the platforms even though they have been notified. Such cases have been escalated to us. I know we are talking about the harmful communications Bill, but it cannot be divorced from the proposal to establish an office of digital safety commissioner. There must be a place within the State where citizens can go to seek the takedown of a piece of content that has not been responded to by a platform.