Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Feeney is very welcome. I admire his openness and willingness to listen and answer questions. If I may, I will focus on social media, although I know he has been fairly well quizzed on it. In a recent radio programme, I listened to a lady who was the owner of a bed and breakfast down the country. In seeking to put up an image on her website, she googled a particular part of her local area, found a photo, downloaded it and put it up on her website. Within a few days she had a letter from a solicitor based in Germany or Poland - I am not sure, but it might have been a German company with a Polish office - who wanted €5,000 for her infringement of copyright. Furthermore, the threat was that they wanted €5,000 for every infringement from her site to any other site. If a company can engage in such litigation, why can Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other company turn around and say they are not publishers? Why can they allow any rubbish that people want to put up? All of us on this platform now have suffered massive attacks at some stage on social media. On one particular occasion, after asking a simple question regarding a particular vaccine in the Seanad I was subjected to a weekend of absolute torture by members of the medical profession. It was only when one of them said that he would diagnose me as having a psychotic disease that I said he had gone too far and I would take it up with the Medical Council. Within five minutes, every single tweet disappeared. I know the medical practices that were involved. I know exactly where they are and who the doctors are. That is what can happen on social media. I would be telling a lie if I said it did not impact my mental health that night as I tried to defend myself. My colleague from Limerick said social media needs to be a one-way street for people in politics and that we should not bother interacting with people. I am still rather perplexed as to why the likes of Facebook are not responsible. I had my own Facebook page cloned on several occasions, where people purported to be me and contacted people with messages that certainly would not come from me. What action can the Press Ombudsman's office take to change the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by social media sites?