Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 21 July 2021

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

General Scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill: Discussion (Resumed)

Ms Alicia O'Sullivan:

Absolutely. We have said that we think an advisory committee on media regulation and online safety should be established. Within that, there should be youth representation.

My generation certainly experiences the online world very differently to my parents or possibly even people in Government. Therefore, young people must be represented. As Professor Crowley touched on, when this happened to me, and as we are all inclined to do, the first thing I did was to look it up. I am a law student as well, but there was not much out there in this context. Coco's Law is very new and has only come in since the end of February. Therefore, experiences like mine have never really been spoken about before. I refer again to this type of dismissive behaviour that we as a society have displayed to issues concerning the Internet. The Internet is a very dangerous thing in the hands of the wrong people. It is also an amazing thing. We must move on now to consider how we can best protect people in this context and it is always important to have young people's voices heard at the table in these types of endeavours.

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