Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. The obligation is on an employer to provide a person with a healthy and safe place to work but when a workplace is the phone or device you are carrying around, it is tough. I wish Ms Byron the best in trying to regulate that area. Specific expertise will be required. Relying on employers to provide leadership will not be sufficient. Rigorous investigation and enforcement will be needed because the capacity for bullying and creation of stress is multiplied when workers are in precarious employment and working long hours for low wages and when power lies in the app on the device. I appreciate what Ms Byron said about things being a little bit less top-down than they used to be but in the area of platform workers, it is very top-down because the app is king.

On a tangentially related issue, it is three years this month since I first raised content moderators with the previous Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I raised it because their working conditions were brought to my attention and the fact these workers, many but not all of them young men and women, suffer PTSD as a direct result of the content they view. Has the HSA's remit been expanded or does it need to be expanded to encompass these workers? Can it encompass them already? There are serious issues around psychological damage being done to young people who are, in many instances, in precarious employment. They work for outsourced companies. You might think you are working for one of the big social media companies but actually you are many steps removed from that because they have outsourced that function. It is an essential function and I do not think it should be outsourced but that is their business. Does the HSA need its remit expanded or does the remit exist already? Does it have the personnel and capability to look into this.