Mr. Liam Herrick:

There is a huge amount in what the Senator has just said. As we have said earlier, everybody accepts that having the community standards and self-regulation as the sole model is neither feasible nor sustainable going forward. However, there is a lot to be said for putting our energies into demanding radical transparency on behalf of the platforms about their processes, about the consistency of their application, and about the algorithms they use. There is a need for a conversation between the companies and the State on what they are doing. However, what is being proposed here is going far beyond that.

If the State seeks to regulate content that is illegal, it is on very solid ground.

If the State seeks to define harmful content in a broader sense, it is putting itself in a very difficult position. It raises the question whereby if it were intended that the State was to supplant the internal monitoring and moderation of the companies themselves, how much in terms of resources would the Oireachtas and the Government intend to commit to doing that? I refer to the task and the scale of what might be involved. We talked about the example of Germany, where the regulator has gone very far and certainly beyond where the Constitution stands in terms of the balance of freedom of expression and private communications.

Nobody is saying that the State has no role. What is proposed in the Bill is too far too fast, however, and it will produce many great difficulties for the State and for the strong protection of freedom of expression in the Constitution.