James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses and Deputy Farrell for those questions. We are going to move to our second round of questions. There are three minutes per member. I will police it a lot more strictly than I did in the first round because the first round was very illustrative and very helpful and we got a good thrust going, but I am mindful of time and I know that the witnesses have been with us for a while as well. We have other meetings tonight. A couple of speakers have indicated for the second round.

We will stick a little more strictly to the time in this round. I will move to Mr. Kennedy first.

We talked about juries and everything else. On a different note, to what extent, if any, do the witnesses think that social media is adequately tackled or tackled at all in the proposed Bill? Head 34 has something on publication, but there are probably wider aspects that should be touched upon. There are so many different nuances to engagement with social media. There is the act of publication. In addition, there are so many different players. There is the platform and then there is the host of the page. There could be sponsored advertisement. There could be a third or fourth party commenting on, liking, amplifying or sharing a comment. There are so many different dynamics involved in a conversation on social media that I am not sure how we grasp the nettle in order that if something is defamatory, we can identify who is responsible. That is quite a simple question but it is also quite a big one that we have not managed to answer to date. I am interested in any views on this and whether the general scheme makes any sense in that context or whether there are gaps that we still need to address.