Ms Una Fitzpatrick:

On the question of penalisation and whether this is for tech giants, our membership comprises all company sizes. We have large companies but also medium and smaller sized companies. They are all, basically, of the same mind. From an Irish perspective, we do not want to take unilateral action on an Irish level. We are waiting to see what will come down from the EU because then it will at least be EU-wide. From an implementation point of view, that will make it slightly more straightforward than having each member state going off and taking different approaches with different responsibilities.

When I mentioned reputation, that is related to that. Ireland has a really positive reputation in the context of engagement between all the stakeholders and opportunities for collaboration, input and working together. We would like an EU-wide statutory footing regarding penalisation to be put in place, with the mechanisms within Ireland for such issues, whether something like the social media council or something else such as NACOS, where issues can be brought to the table and worked through in a collaborative way, with all stakeholders' perspectives brought forward.