Ms Tanya Ward:

I am delighted to have an opportunity to meet the committee in respect of this Bill. There are three issues we wanted to raise with the committee with regard to the Bill. The first relates to the naming of the online safety commissioner in the legislation. The legislation talks about appointing commissioners. I understand the Government's position is that the Bill does not say there should be an online safety commissioner because it wants the flexibility to appoint additional commissioners in the future if there is a demand. However, you could also consider the reverse. What if a future government decides it does not want to have an online safety commissioner? What if there were two online safety commissioners and a government decided to get rid of one of them? This is something about which we are concerned. We feel there is no real reason the legislation could not be amended to state that there will be at least one online safety commissioner. That would be a very important amendment and the Oireachtas needs to accept it.

The committee has heard from many organisations and stakeholders with regard to the individual complaints mechanism. I cannot emphasise enough how absolutely important this is. This online safety legislation will have failed if it does not include an independent individual mechanism for children and young people. They are up against the big, wealth technology giants that control the majority of these platforms and do not invest enough in safety-proofing or in privacy measures. The emphasis should obviously be on making these platforms process cases in a timely and effective fashion. We are concerned that, without some independent mechanism, children will not have a right to a remedy. This is something provided for in law. A common or typical case about which we would hear from our members might involve a nine-year-old or a ten-year-old posting content that is harmful to them while a child and then getting bullied about it later in life. It might otherwise involve other children or young people posting content that is harmful to them, on which basis they get bullied. As we have heard time and again, these platforms are very slow and inconsistent in taking this kind of content down.

The last issue I will raise with the committee relates to the area of education. Members will know that children who are vulnerable offline are very vulnerable online. Most children do not have an adult at their shoulder when they are online. That is just the reality of the situation. What do we do? We have to make the Internet a safer place for them. We have to regulate it. The other thing we need to do is to focus on empowering and educating children to protect themselves online.

One of our concerns, which has come up through our member organisations, relates to the lack of consistency in online education in our schools and youth settings throughout the country. There needs to be a core curriculum, stipulated by the online safety commissioner. The commissioner should have a role in regulating and registering those who deliver this type of education to children and young people. It is only in this way that we can be sure that children are getting the toolkit they need to keep themselves safe online.