Mr. Dualta Ó Broin:

On the privacy point, yes, I had the opportunity to see the session last week, and we both have had the opportunity to see previous sessions as well. As a general point, I thank the members for the amount of time that they are giving to the pre-legislative scrutiny of this legislation. To come back to privacy concerns, we are looking at a general scheme which we believe requires identification. We said there are privacy concerns in terms of that, and we outline that it is not, in our view, appropriate to legislate in this space until all of these issues have been taken into account. I refer to the evidence from the Data Protection Commission last week. The witness phrased it as "not per se" and that it would be possible if one put all of the appropriate safeguards, data protection impact assessments and all of the requirements around those provisions. That is fine but what we are saying is that there would seem to be a more straightforward way that would not figure the privacy concerns on that particular point in terms of the address.

Overall, the first point is to make sure the office of the regulator is appropriately staffed and resourced. I think that is very important and should not be lost sight of. It is possible to set down in legislation that the role of the regulator in this space will be to ensure transparency in online political advertising and not, as I said previously, go into the level of detail that is currently provided for in the general scheme. For example, one could have a statutory code, in that once there has been engagement with online platforms, academics, etc., the electoral commission would codify it in statutory code, which sets down the requirements that online platforms should meet. That would allow the online platforms to build, and to continue to build and innovate, the products and services that we have, and that are different, right across our own platforms and the other platforms that would be involved in the space.

In terms of the point made about what the European Commission is doing, it may be that what is announced by the European Commission in six months is not satisfactory to the legislators here or to Government. That is okay as Ireland, as a member state, has the power and competence to legislate for electoral law. Is it just a case of asking, given that that is only six months away, would it be more prudent to wait to see what is in that legislation before progressing with these measures as they are? There are a number of things in there. Ultimately, what we want in this space is an effective regulator to engage with and to continue to innovate and improve our services and provide transparency. That is the objective here.