Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses for their very informative presentations to the committee today. They have brought very detailed observations on the Bill. I will ask them to extrapolate further on some of the points they have made.

My first question is for Dr. Culloty. She spoke about future-proofing, which is the idea behind having a commissioner for media pluralism. The problem for any Bill like this is the fluidity of social media platforms and how they change to reach larger audiences. It will be difficult to keep on top of the issue, which I believe was Dr. Culloty's point. Is research ongoing into online enforcement of community standards by social media platforms? I had a recent experience of this with one of the platforms in question. What issues do researchers encounter when trying to research these platforms? Dr. Culloty mentioned that the platforms were not that willing to share information with independent researchers. Perhaps that is where the issue of disinformation comes into this.

Professor O'Mahony stated that the Bill did not require service providers to carry out any form of due diligence in respect of children's rights, for example, risk assessment of possible forms of online harm that might result from their services. We have touched on this matter already, but will he expand on it further?

Dr. McAuley made many observations. Someone mentioned the consequences and obligations stemming from harmful online content. I did not write down the person's name, although it may have been Professor O'Mahony. This is an important matter. How does Dr. McAuley suggest the Bill could address it better? Dr. Culloty spoke about how the speed of removal of harmful content was not what it should be. Perhaps that point feeds into this matter.