Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputies Devlin and Higgins have asked many of the questions I was going to ask and I will not go labouring the points. I enjoyed Mr. Feeney's presentation. He is open and frank. He made it very interesting. He is bang on the button regarding much of the material we are dealing with. I have to say, as others have, that I regret the difficulties the regional and local printed press are going through. I am thinking about my area where I have to get my message out. This is in Roscommon, Longford, Leitrim, Mayo, part of Galway and Westmeath. I will not mention all of the publications that are there but the number in the region is extraordinary. They have served the communities very well. I have done local notes for local newspapers and minor articles for them. I mainly worked in local radio. I made a contribution to a television programme on TG4 for two and a half years. I used to work with a company called Irish TV. I know a lot about this.

I have to go back to the area of social media.

Like many others, I have suffered. I will not bring up the whole story again because it has been well documented. Thousands have suffered. Mr. Feeney mentioned women. They have suffered terribly. I want to bring up the women we cannot see. Things happened in my family. We could be talking about your daughter, your mother, your wife, your sister or your sister-in-law. Some of them were very disturbed by what was going on. They were receiving vile threats on social media. I have to say it was very well documented by the national and local press. They did a very good job on it. It was notoriously difficult to get Facebook to take down material - day in, day out and week in, week out. There were vile threats. We can talk about this again. I do not think that is right. Many people who are hidden in the background, such as family members, are really upset and disturbed by this. Not only has this happened to me, but it has also happened to many people. I am therefore still not satisfied that the social media outlets are committed and dedicated to coming clean about all of this. We have a lot of work to do.

I do not know what Mr. Feeney’s opinions are on anonymous accounts. I know some people say they do not have a bother with them. I have a bother with anonymous accounts, to be open and frank with the committee. I would like to know Mr. Feeney’s opinion on them. He mentioned thejournal.ie, which has a really good system, as has been stated. If we could develop that for our local media, it would be good. He is right. The local media put up two or three stories and hope to attract people to them, but they will not be able to keep going financially with the way things are. That is the reality. Social media is eating them up. It is really eating them up. Something has to be done urgently.

On the overseas platforms, there is much controversy about how much is being done from outside the country. Has Mr. Feeney any concerns about that? These systems are working from outside the country. They are coming up with a lot of very personal material against people.

Deputy Devlin dealt very well with policies about the right to be forgotten. We discussed that.

Could Mr. Feeney answer some of the questions I have asked? I will not come in again. I think that we as a committee have to look for more staff for the Press Council of Ireland. I hope that will happen quickly. The role they have and what they will have to deal with in the coming years will be extraordinary. We are having a really good discussion today. If Mr. Feeney could make a few comments, it would be great. I pay tribute to all of the local papers in terms of the Covid-19 coverage. They were very important, particularly for the older generation, who might still read the paper.