Ms Sinéad Gibney:

I thank the Senator. It is good to see him twice in the same week. On the question of individual complaints, we did not go into detail on this issue in our submission. However, I would be more than happy to engage in further scrutiny of this. I will give my response to the question today.

We want to see more detail on the super-complaints mechanism proposal. That would be welcome. I listened back to some of the contributions to the committee from both rights groups and tech companies. There has to be better transparency around the handling of individual complaints. There has to be a move away from the obligation on the individual, rather than on the tech or online platforms, in determining the harmful content. This is an example of where there has to be an inclusive approach. The tech companies have expertise to help address this issue. A body or commission like this has the potential to bring together the different actors within this State and provide leadership across Europe in finding a resolution to this issue. This is an example of the kind of issue where we can bring those groups together to deal with it. This is not something we can do without co-operation among the different actors involved. The tech companies will play an important role in resolving this and their expertise will be needed to do so.

I know there are issues around speed of take-down and the ownership piece. First and foremost, there has to be transparency within the Bill. To go back to what we are putting forward most strongly around legality, proportionality and appropriateness, if those concepts inform the design of this law and the commission, the committee will, I believe, come up with appropriate solutions.

I would be more than happy for our team to go into more detail on that element of the Bill. The legislation is so wide-ranging that we were only able to go into certain areas of it in our initial submission.

On algorithmic decision-making, the Senator will see that we have encouraged the incorporation in the legislation not only of content but also of conduct. That would deal with the particular issues to which he alluded. We saw the first example of that essentially in the predicted grades last year. That will definitely be a huge issue as more artificial intelligence, AI, is used across the public and private sectors. It is critical that is incorporated. Our suggestions around conduct would deal with and address that.