Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Boyhan for his questions. With respect to ending the marked register, I am personally agnostic on it. I do not think the party has ever been asked to take a position. It is a useful tool to assist increased voter turnout. Given that in some areas there is declined voter turnout, I would carefully weigh the pros and cons of what the Senator is proposing. It is certainly something we should consider.

With respect to targeted advertisements, it is similar to what Mr. Sheehan said. If I am boosting a post in my constituency, I may only want it to go to the people who live in Clondalkin or Lucan and therefore use the geography function. If I am posting something about renters, I might use an age category. In general, we would use the tools available on Facebook. All of that is recorded and publicly accessible through the Facebook advertisement library and, in that sense, it is quite transparent.

I think we have an important job with this legislation to look carefully at online advertising to make sure the Bill we pass has the strongest possible regulations. It was interesting that when Facebook came before the committee, it wanted us to weaken what is in the legislation. Sinn Féin will work with all members of this committee to make sure this Bill, which will regulate online advertising for elections for the first time, is as rigorous as possible. We can have strong regulations when it comes to other areas of advertising during elections and I would like to see the same level of rigour, transparency, accountability and limitation on large spending on online advertising too.