Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to our visitors for missing the presentations. I have listened to what has been said and I am very conscious of Senator Ruane's contribution. The contributions indicate the multifaceted nature of what we are dealing with. I am not a legal expert, nor am I an expert on social media, as much as I would like to think I am. It is absolutely apparent that young people are using platforms that are not even familiar to most of us. We had a presentation on this theme at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly yesterday, where I asked the question that I am going to ask the witnesses. Please do not interpret it as me being glib since I mean it sincerely. Since it represents the bulk of what we are dealing with and what we understand to be the main form of online harassment and harmful communication, I would like to get some understanding from the witnesses about how we go about legislating for toxic, harmful or warped masculinity. For me, there seems to be a common thread throughout most, though not all, harmful, abusive communications online. The need for education and a cultural change was discussed at the meeting I was at yesterday and that is absolutely the case.

We have referred to the main social media providers such as Twitter and Facebook and things being posted on their services. We could implement laws and define the legal instruments required to deal with some of this. However, if we do not legislate for the root cause, then even with the greatest will in the world, if something is posted and dealt with in a matter of minutes, taken down, and sin é, it has still found its way in that time onto WhatsApp and such, where it is shared on perhaps 47 different group chats with an average of 20 people each. There is an issue of culpability, and I would like a clearer understanding of who is responsible. Is it the producer of the image, the sharer or the holder? People have God knows how many WhatsApp messages a day and sometimes they do not even know what they have been sent.

I would appreciate the witnesses' views on those themes. That is not to let the providers off the hook. Legal and legislative instruments need to be agreed and provided for, but we need to address it fundamentally as opposed to just saying that we need to change the culture or to have a societal conversation. We have seen that problem of toxic, harmful and warped understandings of masculinity on public platforms and how harmful some of that can be. It happened in my own home city, with the notorious trial that took place last year.