Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Mythen for his questions and there may be more time at the end if he wants to come back in again.

I thank the witnesses for their presentations and it is good to have them here today, having had the tech giants in yesterday. I made the point that I feel the social media platforms are not just platforms, and they really have moved into the publishing space. Mr. Coveney touched on the erosion of democracy and how social media platforms are undoubtedly feeding into all of that. He spoke about additional categories of online content, such as fake news, disinformation, harmful information, misleading commercial communications and political advertising. Do the witnesses believe a regulator will need additional resources to regulate these areas and what resources might be needed? I will come to Mr. Coveney first because he raised this issue in his presentation.