Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask Ms Ward and Ms Cooney to comment on how we can specifically build in a voice for children and young people when the new online safety commissioner is set up. It is important that they have influence, particularly over the shaping of the codes that will be drawn up.

I want to talk about advertising and micro-targeting of children and young people. At present the BAI has quite a good code on advertising for traditional broadcasters.

There are some flaws in it, but it is pretty comprehensive. I do not see any reason we cannot fold that into a new code. In my view, we should look at trying to prohibit most forms of advertising and microtargeting aimed at children. We should allow children to be children, essentially. I would be grateful for the witnesses' views on that.

My final question comes back to the issue of separating the implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive from the safety commissioner and the media commission. I take the view we should set up the media commission and the online safety commissioner. They will be flawed and there will be problems from the start because technology is changing so quickly it will not be able to cover everything. Quite frequently, we set up regulators and let the legislation catch up. We need to deal with the issues around some of the principles. We will be dealing with the use of biometrics very soon, particularly TikTok and its use of biometric data. We will be dealing with that issue and trying to address it. I am interested in hearing the witnesses' views on what the core principles of the online safety commission should be when we set it up. It will be very difficult for us to try to constantly future-proof against every technological development.