Mr. Liam Herrick:

As Dr. McIntyre set out earlier, the haste and the urgency of the Bill comes from the transposition of the directive, and the difficulty is that all the other extraneous matters that have been included in the Bill require further deliberation. One example of other legislative developments going on in parallel that will have an impact on the Bill is the question of hate crime and incitement to hatred. Separately, the Department of Justice has issued a policy paper aiming to review the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 and to legislate for hate crime for the first time. The approach that has been taken in that case is very strongly grounded in principles of freedom of expression and will introduce statutory definitions of concepts to which the Bill we are discussing will then makes cross references. Therefore, to advance this Bill before that legislation is enacted and resolves the definition in that Act will require further amendment down the line.

On the question of bullying, I wish to clarify that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties is a member of the Children's Rights Alliance. We take the problem of bullying and the harm experienced by children very seriously, but it is important to bear in mind that the problem of bullying did not arrive with the Internet. The supports that children require to be protected from harm include changes to the curriculum in schools and supports in schools. There is also the chronic underinvestment by successive Governments in mental health and other supports for children. The Oireachtas is rightly concerned about dealing with this problem, but the suggestion that this is the only measure to deal with it is a misdirection of energy and priority when, frankly, the Oireachtas has underperformed over a long period of time in providing the necessary financial and other resources to schools and other services that are trying to help children to develop resilience in the face of bullying.