Ms Liz Carolan:

On the Deputy's final point regarding values in Europe versus those in the US, I would add to that around political advertising that my colleague, Ms Wade, spends a significant amount of time working with various European colleagues and they are constantly looking to Ireland for regulation around political advertising because it is possible that the country of origin principle will apply such that whatever we introduce in Ireland could end up being de facto legislation for the whole of Europe. That is another matter for the committee to bear in mind.

In terms of the political purposes, I strongly recommend that the committee speak directly to the ICCL, because it has done a significant amount of thinking on this issue and has published its views. Its statement is linked to in the footnotes of my written submission. I highly recommend speaking to the ICCL. It has spoken quite a bit about how these issues mesh and I agree with its views in this regard.

In terms of how the legislation can be amended, I and some colleagues, including some of the academics to whom the committee has already spoken, are in the process of working on a paper on this issue. That has been slightly hampered by me having a baby in December and being on maternity leave.