Ms Triona Quill:

On an individual complaints mechanism, when audiovisual media services was being discussed at European level, it was very much the view that the approach to regulation had to take account of the scale of some of these online platforms and also the nature of content, which is less straightforward than data protection. When one is trying to balance rights, these are not simple issues to address. There is a strong view that systemic regulation is the way to go because what no one needs is an attempt to introduce an individual complaints mechanism that would be quickly ground down and would build up backlogs and cease to be effective. That would inevitably happen, no matter how large the resources put into a regulator of this kind, because it is the nature of such complaints that they could not be decided quickly. They would have to balance rights and it would not be a process that could be completed quickly. Furthermore, we could not just put a complaints mechanism in place for Ireland. It would have to extend, in the case of video-sharing platforms, to the 450 million people across the European Union, with all the complexities that would arise there.

To be honest, some online services might prefer an individual complaints mechanism because in some ways it would shift the burden from them to a regulator. The approach we have taken, which was taken at European level, is also being taken in the UK, for example, which is now outside the EU and looking at its own processes. It is also taking a systemic approach because the view is that to really effect change such an approach is necessary.

People can still make complaints to a regulator but it would not be a matter of resolving their individual complaints but of identifying, from a risk perspective, where the problems lie and which areas need to be audited, for example, what particular service or type of content. It will feed in in that way. The legislation also provides that certain services, for instance, NGOs, could be designated to act as what are informally called super-complaints services. If they are seeing an issue arising among users of their service which is consistent and indicative of a systemic problem, there will be a formal mechanism there that they can bring issues forward to the regulator.

We have listened to stakeholders who have put forward their view that there should be an individual complaints mechanism. We respect their views and see where they are coming from. However, having weighed up the issues, we believe such a mechanism would not be effective and would not ultimately serve the needs of the public and that the approach we have taken is the one most likely to be effective.

I am sorry but I did not quite understand the Senator's point about excluding linear services.