Mr. Rory Coveney:

On the issue of resources, I did not get to say it because of the time restriction but, at the end of my submission, I pointed out that it is an enormous undertaking to expand the regulator's powers to all of these platforms. I very much hope this committee, and the broader Parliament and Government, recognise that and give the media commission the resources it needs to do the job correctly. The resources that will push against some of this regulation, and that are available to some of the platforms that are now due to be regulated, are very considerable and the State will need to tool up, frankly, if it seeks to implement these standards and codes adequately.

In regard to the Chairman's comments on my submission on these kinds of areas, we are just not there at the moment and, for example, the issue of misinformation or disinformation is not listed as a category of online harm. I am not remotely saying that is easy to define. However, when television started 50 years ago, concerns were expressed about its capacity to pollute the culture and to influence people in particular ways, and so on, yet regulation has evolved over time to balance the issues of freedom of speech and protecting people from harm over many years. It is a complicated balance to get right but it is not appropriate that we just say misinformation or disinformation is too hard to deal with. It is overly pervasive across the world, not alone in Ireland, and its impacts are incredibly harmful and increasing, if anything.

It is an area that needs real consideration. In terms of advertising, everyone has seen the rise of social media influencers as a key new means of commercial communications. The blurring of editorial and commercial is something we all need to be careful of. There are very specific codes which permit all sorts of commercial activity that are long established in broadcasting. There are a lot of lessons in that. This is ultimately about transparency, that the audience or user knows exactly what they are seeing, its provenance, who is saying it to them and for what purpose. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from broadcasting in the context of the regulation of some of these platforms in terms of advertising.

In response to the point about democracy, it is really about acknowledging that a complete asymmetry exists between what broadcasters - independent radio broadcasters, national public service broadcasters, commercial TV broadcasters and public broadcasters - are allowed do when it comes to advertising towards a political end. That is not just advertisements for political parties but all sorts of campaigning if an event goes on around that and public advocacy is prohibited in terms of advertising. I think that is a good thing, personally, and RTÉ thinks that is a good thing. The reality is this activity has just moved online as a result, and they are effectively highly tailored broadcast advertisements being published to different audiences using online platforms. It is video. It is exactly the same thing, it is just the means of distribution is different. In fact, it is even more complicated because different people are getting different versions of the same advertisements depending on the targeting and the approaches used. I am not pretending RTÉ has the solutions to this, other than to point out that the goals of the prohibition on political advertising in broadcasting are solid.