Ms Kathryn Walsh:

I will try to run through some of the issues Deputy Mythen brought up. As I said earlier, the BAI had the first role in Ireland in regulating food marketing from a statutory perspective. While the review did not happen, there are good things. We would like to see the watershed extended. Because the BAI has been subsumed into the media commission, we hope that its remit in respect of unhealthy food marketing is not lost. Again, it should be brought forward in making sure that online marketing is strengthened and that there is a statutory scheme. It is very important we have a statutory regulatory scheme. We would be very much opposed to the self-regulation scheme.

As for some of the other things we would like, in our submission we have a number of recommendations. I will not go through them individually but I will highlight the recommendations raised by other children's rights organisations. The individual complaints mechanism with the online safety commissioner is particularly critical for us because we have lodged a number of complaints about junk food marketing and commercial communications, for example, with the ASAI, and we found that process very long and very arduous. Parents had been lodging these complaints and then finding that it could take four to 12 months for a resolution to be met. Given the fluctuating nature of how advertising works, by the time a complaint is adjudicated upon, the ad in question is not being run any more. If a complaint is upheld, we find that the recommendation will be that the post might be removed or not run again. That is not sufficient given the situation in which we find ourselves. Again, we would like an independent complaints mechanism with the online safety commissioner, strong statutory regulation and a move away from self-regulation of this sphere.