Ms Tanya Ward:

It is quite simple to involve young people and children when developing codes of conduct and other programmes and mechanisms the online safety commissioner would be obliged to deliver and produce. An amendment could be included that imposes a legal obligation on the online safety commissioner to consult with children and young people on a corporate basis. That would inform any of his or her actions in this space. There is a plethora of organisations with expertise in this area. The Government has its participation unit and the Ombudsman for Children's Office has its own participation work. There are many ways that could happen. That is the best way to ensure children and young children are consulted in any of those mechanisms.

I completely agree with the Senator on profiling. There was much talk about the digital age of consent a number of years ago, which just fell well short. We should have been talking about why we could not ban the profiling of young children's data and its commercial exploitation. Why can we not do that? That is what the conversation should have been about instead of this mock mechanism that was meant to protect children's data but, so far, has not done a very good job. We certainly support and back any amendment in that area. The Irish Heart Foundation got an amendment carried relating to that data protection legislation but, unfortunately, it was not brought into force due to the European Commission.

The Senator's party in particular has talked about the international space and what is happening at EU level. Some of these matters will have to be dealt with at EU level because one of the principles of the general data protection regulation, GDPR, is that there is meant to be equality in the marketing of products. When Ireland tries to impose a better standard in that space, we will probably come into contact with EU law. That is something that might need to be dealt with at an international level. Different attempts could be made on that when legislating for the online safety Bill and online safety commissioner.

I am concerned about any delay in the establishment of an online safety commissioner. As Ms Ahern and Ms Jennings said, it can take ten years to develop EU law and much experience will be missed. It is also very important to imagine the impact the establishment of an online safety commissioner in Ireland will have on the rest of the European Union and the shaping it will do at EU level. Ireland could play a massive global role in keeping children safe online and I hope we go in that direction.