Ms Triona Quill:

I thank the Deputy. The Deputy is correct that the Bill will dissolve the BAI. The current functions of the BAI will all fold into the new commission. What will be different is the governance structure. The BAI has a board and statutory committees under it and those functions will instead by exercised by the commissioners appointed to the media commission.

Those functions will all fold into the new commission and there will be additional functions. At present, the BAI does not have responsibility in respect of on-demand services, other than providing a backstop to the current complaints system operated by the On-Demand Audiovisual Services Group, ODAS, under the aegis of IBEC in regard to on-demand services. We are moving from a situation of self-regulation, effectively, with some element of co-regulation, to direct regulation by the media commission in respect of on-demand services. In addition, the BAI at present has no function in regard to video sharing platform services or other online services of that nature, and the media commission, through the online safety commissioner, will have responsibility in respect of those services. Those are the key additional functions that will transfer. In addition, obviously, the media commission will have some functions that the BAI currently has in respect of, say, media literacy, where there will be a research in education function and so on. Those are the three core functions that the new media commission will have.

In respect of the sort of resources that it might be expected the new media commission would have, we are currently working on a business case which will underpin our negotiations and discussions with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in this regard. We envisage that the media commission will need to grow quickly to approximately the size of the Data Protection Commission. We recognise that the new regulator will have substantial and important functions, and it needs to be resourced accordingly. My understanding is that, at present, the Data Protection Commission is growing towards 180 members of staff, so while the current staffing of the BAI will obviously be included, there will need to be very substantial additional staffing of the office to fulfil the functions.

In respect of the chair of the media commission, the Deputy is correct that the chair will be responsible to the Committee of Public Accounts. We recognise it is important to have that corporate accountability by the commission overall to the Committee of Public Accounts. In addition, individual commissioners will be responsible to committees such as this in respect of their functional areas.

In terms of other legislation by other Departments, the way the media commission will operate in terms of the online safety framework is that one of the categories will be in respect of criminal content. Where legislation is to be put in place by, say, the Department of Justice in respect of child sexual abuse material, terrorism content or harmful online communications, or the forthcoming legislation in respect of hate crime or incitement to hatred, as those pieces of legislation are enacted, they will come within the scope of our legislation. We are not aiming to start from scratch or to duplicate the expertise of the Department of Justice with regard to criminal legislation, but such legislation will be within the scope of our Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill. It is important to distinguish that whereas the legislation put in place by the Department of Justice enables the Garda to investigate and bring forward prosecutions, where appropriate, in respect of individuals who have breached those pieces of legislation, our legislation is targeted at the online services and platforms.