Dr. Jane Suiter:

I could spend a good deal of time on advertising, and perhaps others will, but I am aware of taking up a lot of time. The Deputy's point on the difference between what we allow on international platforms and what we allow in national media is very marked. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, has made a submission stating this is not best practice in its view. We know the big platforms - the Facebooks, the Twitters and the Googles - operate according to their own rules. They all have idiosyncratic definitions. Twitter may announce a ban on something and Facebook may not while YouTube may do something else entirely. There is a big question as to whether we allow the regulation of that to be decided by big US platforms rather than by ourselves. In addition, their responses are usually driven by US politics and not by Irish politics.

There are many questions there and others around the fact that we are narrowly keeping it to electoral periods when we all know there is much political activity between elections so that seems problematic. There is the issue around transparency. It is good that we are looking for transparency but we are only going to have the archive available afterwards rather than in real time. Obviously, journalists, researchers and political parties would like to see that kind of archive in real time. While the moves on political advertising are welcome there are quite a few holes or lacunas and there are ways it could be substantially improved.