Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and I thank the departmental guests present here this morning. I echo some of the sentiments of colleagues here this morning regarding this Bill being technical and the scope of it seems very large. All of us here obviously want to see greater protection in respect of the communications and activities online.

I wish to raise, if I may, a couple of issues. In Ms Greene’s opening statement she said that the 2000 regime was being adopted in order that providers may survey without running the risk of losing protections from liability. We know of many people in Ireland, particularly in respect of social media, where they are trying to get social media content removed. For some people, that has been quite an arduous process. Will this regime allow this process to be speeded up? Is it the case that this will give platforms, which are obviously afraid of legal actions, a carte blancheto remove something pending a review, or some such thing? Is that envisaged in respect of where this legislation is going?

Ms Greene outlined that the providers will scope the intermediate and hosting services, the online platforms and the large online platforms. This covers, I believe, the whole gamut of people who are involved in social media management, networking and net management also. That seems to be a very large remit in respect of an agency which is being described as being allocated €2.7 million in regard to its set-up costs.

I also noted Ms Greene’s point that Ireland will have a pre-eminent role because of the large number of digital platforms which are headquartered here in Ireland. I presume we are very much relying on the European Commission, where ultimately we are going to slot into its framework, as opposed to being managing our own regime. It is very hard to see, from my perspective in any event, how Ireland might take on such a significant role if such action was to be taken against Google, Facebook or some such platform, which is located in Ireland.

What would be the jurisdiction of the courts also in such matters? Can Ms Greene deal with those couple of points, please?