Ms Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin:

I thank the Deputy. There are several challenges with organising content moderators in their current employment status, the primary one being, as the Deputy identified correctly, the outsourcing model used by these employers. As I mentioned briefly in my statement, when you are looking to raise or address an issue with an employer, you have to identify who that employer is - who is calling the shots, so to speak. When an individual worker raises an issue with his or her direct employer, the outsourced company, he or she is referred to the business requirements of the client, and if the person attempts to raise any issues with the client company, he or she is correctly advised that he or she is not employed by the client company.

The other main issue we have that is unique to content moderators and which I have not encountered in my 15 years' experience of organising until this point is this climate of fear Ms Plunkett outlined so clearly. They are required to sign these non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, they are given on day one. These are taken away. They do not have time to read them. They certainly do not have time to refer to them. Regularly and frequently they are reminded they exist. As difficult as it is to organise a new workplace and give those workers the assurance they have the right and entitlement to be a member of a trade union and raise legitimate issues, to convince a worker he or she has that right when he or she is being bombarded on all sides by this climate of fear and secrecy Ms Plunkett described so well is an extra layer of challenge for those workers. Until the position is clarified that these workers have the right to raise issues in the same way as any other workers, it will remain a significant challenge for them.