Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the context of some of my own amendments which we will be dealing with later, specifically amendment No. 74 where I propose to prohibit online advertising, I ask the Minister of State to take on board the widespread concern expressed by members of this committee. We feel that in many ways, the regulations regarding online political advertising are really a facilitation of it. I do not want to rehearse all of the arguments but I refer to many of the concerns raised during pre-legislative scrutiny process. While I do not want to speak on amendment No. 70 too early, it relates to other amendments so I feel I must explain my position.

One concern is that we are just regulating it for the period of the election. We know that spending on online advertising accrues a benefit well in advance of the election period so the idea of only regulating it during an electoral period is a farce, in many ways. Many members of this committee felt that online political advertising should be, at the very least, regulated for a much greater period. The second issue that arose is the anomaly of the prohibition of advertising on broadcast media, that is, radio and television, and the facilitation under this Bill of online political advertising.

It makes no sense to deprive trusted local media outlets, such as local radio stations that providing good quality news, of advertising sources - for good reason, because we do not want to go down that road of advertising - yet facilitate online platforms that, in many cases, withdraw from the idea of even being called a publisher and have quite loose standards in terms of fact checking to circulate content that, as we have seen in other countries, is often detrimental to the democratic process. This is a once-in-a-generation Bill. It is fantastic legislation but the very light touch approach in the context of online advertising is its real weakness. I propose that we ban online advertising, bring it in line with the current ban in broadcast media and actively regulate the space in a very strong way or allow the commission to do so. We are tinkering at the edges of something that strongly impacts the democratic process. We have seen how outside agents in other countries have influenced elections and referendums across the world. We have not come to grips with how online advertising is dealt with in the Bill. I would appreciate it if the Minister of State were to speak to amendment-----