Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Míle buíochas.

I will go straight to the issue of effective age verification. To quote directly from Ms Hodnett's statement, the coimisiún is proposing:

that platforms introduce effective age verification to ensure that children do not access age-inappropriate content. We are not proposing to specify the techniques that platforms use...

How interventionist is the coimisiún going to be on that? I want us to get beyond codes and protocols and into the hard legal space.If Internet providers or the Googles of this world are not adhering to codes of conduct, what are the legal mechanisms that are open to the coimisiún to go after entities that are not protecting children adequately? In other words, I see Ms Hodnett's statement on effective age verification as leaving it in the hands of the ISPs, or the industry as it were. If the coimisiún is not more interventionist than that, they will be out the gap. They still will be getting away with the same behaviours if the coimisiún does not have a stick to beat them with, so to speak. That is my second question.

I need Ms Hodnett's language to be harder than that, as otherwise I am fearful that children will not be protected, as the coimisiún is taking on the might of a global multibillion euro industry. The coimisiún is quite a small regulatory house although I do not mean that in a pejorative sense. How will the coimisiún take them on without the weight of legislation behind them, as well as the means to put in place very large fines? Can Ms Hodnett tell me more about what the coimisiún is proposing in that sense?