Dr. T.J. McIntyre:

We can make two brief points in response to Senator Carrigy's point. One is that, to the extent that there are discrete concrete problems, we can sometimes deal with them in discrete ways which do not necessarily require going into this broader frame of legislation. For example, with regard to material which promotes suicide, we can legislate to criminalise that more explicitly. There is an existing prohibition, but we could legislate to widen that regarding the provision of information about the commission of suicide without any great difficulty. That would provide a secure basis to deal with those cases.

More generally, however, there might be some misapprehension as to how far-reaching the effects of this Bill would be, if adopted. The heads of the Bill propose that we legislate for providers who are established in the State. Quite a few providers are established in Ireland because of our rather generous tax regime and this legislation would have a significant effect in respect of those, but it would have no effect at all on providers who are headquartered elsewhere. I doubt it is the case, therefore, that there would be a huge reduction in certain types of concerning content, for example, material that promotes suicide or eating disorders, which is already relatively actively policed by the types of providers that tend to be headquartered in Ireland. That material, to the extent that it is available from other providers elsewhere, will continue to be available from other providers elsewhere. I do not believe we should overstate the effects of this legislation. If we say we need to act quite quickly in respect of some of these issues, it is not the case that a purely domestic response, even given the number of tech firms headquartered in Ireland, is necessarily going to have that effect. Unfortunately, this is an area where we have to look for international solutions as well. For that reason we should consider the desirability of integrating this with the Digital Services Act.