Ms Liz Carolan:

I have been digging to find out who is responsible for ensuring that the seats Oireachtas Members fill are filled in elections that are free, fair, open, honest and free of international interference. No one is responsible. SIPO has responsibility for ensuring that campaigns do not receive funding from outside the jurisdiction unless it is from citizens located overseas. For self-funded campaigns or operations that are happening online, though, SIPO has no remit. I asked it whether it could do anything, but it could not.

As a minimum, the first step is to have a statutory body that has responsibility for ensuring that our elections are free from international interference, which is not the case currently. It would be a complex job and would require the statutory body to be able to stay abreast of developments in international operations. Many of the major online platforms want to operate within the law of the land. If that law does not say that international interference is illegal, they cannot act even when we find something. That is what we saw in 2018. Facebook and Google prevented overseas groups from purchasing advertisements during the referendum on the eighth amendment because there was ambiguity about some advertisements that were boosting posts by Irish groups, which could have fallen under the provisions relating to illicit overseas funding of third party campaigns in Ireland. That was the slightly tortuous route that they were able to find to ensure that the actions they took were compliant with Irish law. The fact that international interference is not illegal currently and no body has responsibility in this regard prevents us from getting private sector actors to take action. They do not like taking action that is not compelled by or, at least, in line with national legislation. Does that answer the Deputy's question?