Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Tánaiste for his opening statement and for meeting with the content moderators. I know they found the meeting to be beneficial. It would be brilliant if one meeting with the Tánaiste or anybody else resolved the issues they have. It will not. This is an ongoing issue. It is one on which the committee heard from the content moderators, in particular one by the name of Isabella Plunkett, last week. I appreciate that the Tánaiste may not have had a chance to hear what she had to say. If he did not, I encourage him to have a look back at the proceedings because she talked from first-hand experience.

The Tánaiste will have heard at the meeting from people who have first-hand experience. We need to look at the way in which these people are working and the work they do. They are our first line of defence. However, we have to ask about the level of trauma these people have to suffer in order for social media platforms to be able to function. Thinking about this logically, if there were a make of car that every time a mechanic fixed he or she broke a finger, we would take it off the road. I do not know if the Tánaiste has a view as to how viable the business model is if it requires such a level of trauma and if the consequent supports are not put in place to ensure that people have the opportunity to debrief and to decompress after a shift. Non-disclosure agreements and conditions that prevent workers from telling their spouse or whoever else is at home when they come home in the evening what it is they have been doing all day are archaic. They have no place in a modern workforce, yet these are the conditions under which these people are working.

I am aware that Facebook wrote back to the Tánaiste and listed the supports in place, but he will be aware that those supports are not available to the content moderators who work for an outsourced platform. Does he have a view as to whether a similar level of support should be offered to such workers? I do not think anything could ever mitigate fully what these poor people have to see in the course of their normal work, but does the Tánaiste have a view on a similar level of supports being available for both outsourced and in-house workers?