Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will go next, if that is okay. I thank everybody who worked on this legislation. It is an exciting piece of reforming legislation which has the potential to transform electoral registration and empower more people to become active participants in democracy. People in Dublin had the opportunity to trial voter.ieand it has been a huge success and has proven to be user-friendly. Students' unions right have called for it to be rolled out nationwide. I am sure they will be pleased with much of what is contained in the Bill.

I will pick up on a point made by Ms Woods when she stated that there will be no change to the marked register. One thing I noticed in my constituency's marked register this time around, post voter.ie, is that it seems to follow a different format. It used to be laid out with house numbers within estates and now it is done alphabetically - by surname within estates, which is not quite as user-friendly for politicians who want to use it to develop canvass plans. Perhaps, that is something at which Ms Woods might look.

I agree with much of what Senator Fitzpatrick said on the data needing to be better managed and also in the context of the need for extra flexibility in respect of people who, for example, are renting and who, in terms of their PPSNs, are registered at their parents' homes.

As Fine Gael spokesperson on social media, I have a keen interest in the ambition, catered for in the Bill, to regulate online political advertising during election periods. I agree with much of what Senator Moynihan said on this issue. A great deal of work is going on at EU level at present. Just before Christmas, the European Democracy Action Plan: Making EU Democracies Stronger was published. The aim behind the plan is to ensure that digital platforms do not destabilise democracies. I doubt there is a politician at this committee who does not have an online presence and who does not use that to get his or her message out to the electorate and build his or her brand nationally. I know there certainly is not an Irish political party that does not have such a presence. Right now, a pretty impressive political campaign is happening online, which has racked up costs of more than €7,000 on Facebook alone, and that is outside of election period. The question is: why do politicians invest in social media strategies? It is because an online presence gives us a national audience and the ability to target our communications at our electorate and amplify and explain our views and ambitions. That is all to be welcomed. Nowadays, social media is an important channel of communication. It helps politicians and campaigners reach out to people and get them involved in politics. We saw this in online initiatives such as #HomeToVote, which amplified movements such as the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment of the Constitution and the marriage equality referendum. This is one of the huge benefits social media offers when it comes to democracy. It also poses a great threat to democracy, however. It allows for easy viral spreading of disinformation, the generation of patterns of online hate messages and for bots that are created solely for political gain.

The briefing paper on this Bill clearly cites regulating political advertising as a way of reducing the advantage access of money brings to political competition. The Minister of State described it as bringing political advertising rules to the online sphere. A big difference between traditional and online advertising, however, is what behind-the-scenes armour one can get if money can buy it. I am talking about apps and bots in particular. Using a bot to create multiple online presences to help a person with a political goal is, in my view, the worst sort of political campaigning anybody could engage in. It is deceitful, disingenuous and threatens our democracy by spreading falsehoods.

There is a clear need to regulate fake and automated accounts in the context of political advertising. Politicians and political parties that put money behind social media posts that deliberately attempt to mislead people, such as on the topic of a Dáil vote, is a direct attack on democracy. It is not good enough to mandate social media platforms to remove such content; we need to start fining those behind it. Democracy is fragile. We saw that this month when supporters who had been egged on by tweets from the then US President Trump stormed Capitol Hill. Allowing social media to become a political weapon threatens our democracy; it is that simple.

What will the Bill do to ensure that social media cannot be politically weaponised through bots and applications? What will it do to monitor and regulate the moneys behind political advertising during election campaigns?