Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt there was an attempt to interfere in some of the referenda and in those instances it was a voluntary take-down policy that was adopted by platforms rather than a legal provision. I spelled out earlier that aside from the requirement to have transparency around political advertising, the reporting of targeting and so on, much broader legislation will cover the funding of referenda in particular. We have ceilings on funding for individual candidates and parties but funding from overseas is not regulated. Foreign donations to Irish political organisations are banned and a lacuna will need to be addressed.

The legislation I am introducing is limited to harmful content such as cyberbullying of individuals rather than the addressing of political fake news or distortion of views. We are not designing it in that way and we are defining harmful content in quite a narrow way. We are working on how such definitions can evolve over time in a way that is legally robust. That will have to come back in some form to the Legislature and an online safety commissioner cannot create that legislation. We must devise a vehicle for that.

It is a fact that any online platform operating in Ireland must respect Irish law and would find itself with enforcement action against it in an Irish court if it failed to do so. There is no doubt that these Acts can be enforced.