Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a number of questions and they bounce between the different threads and the different contributions, so witnesses can pick up on what applies to them in terms of their contributions.

I understand if Dr. Mathers has to leave and I thank her for travelling over from the UK. We have heard lots of good things about her. That is why reached out, so we were delighted she could be here. I have been involved with lots of different digital organisations, charities and activists in the last few years since I have been a public representative. Part of me gets a bit frustrated, because I feel like we are repeating that cycle that we had with literacy many years ago, where we are just scraping off the people who we can motivate and engage with. I mention the issues of isolation and loneliness and people being able to engage with their doctors or with social welfare. Again, we are reaching people just to get them through the day. In the past year, I have become more aware that when it comes to digital literacy, the problem is going to be much bigger than it was in terms of literacy and being able to engage with democracy and the threat to democracy. Who actually builds the systems we are working within? When I think of that 52% of people, who do not have basic literacy skills, I wonder who they are. When we are collating that data, is there a demographic identifier of who makes up that 52%?

It feeds into what Mr. Bryant said earlier about a particularly high rate of ICT graduates. Again, who are those ICT graduates? We have to look at how that divide is set up. Sometimes, a number can look good, but actually it is just a really stark, gaping hole between the two different kinds of people that fit into either of those camps. I am wondering what we can do to impact the different levels of digital literacy so people can use it not only to engage in life, but to disseminate information that they are reading online and be able to know what is and is not a real article and whether it is peer-reviewed. What are we teaching people at that basic level?

Maybe Mr. Bryant can go a bit further into how AI and job automation are going to affect those with basic literacy skills. I know we have discussed this before, but I became really alarmed when I started reading some of the stuff that Mr. Bryant gave me about how algorithms are being built in the US that have that class, racial or gender bias and are even being used within the prison system to detect whether somebody will commit a crime in the future, a crime that has not even been committed. This all ties into who those ICT graduates are in the first place, and how we can change so people are not being let down by their digital literacy skills and by society or life generally but can instead engage in education and democracy without being discriminated against by algorithms.

I am wondering about fake news and democracy, and maybe Mr. Marshall can answer this question for me. Are people with low levels of literacy or digital literacy most susceptible to fake news and the threat to democracy, elections, health information and everything that comes with that? We have seen online all these dubious links between certain injections. Who is going to be most impacted by this type information, and how can we improve digital literacy to ensure that people can engage in a real way with that type of material?

What does a whole of Irish society approach look like? I know Ms Waters was speaking of the approach that was taken in relation to the Good Things Foundation, and maybe she could talk a little about what that actually looks like in an Irish context. I think that is it for now.