Ms Noelle O'Connell:

Great. I thank the Senator. I will take the high-level big picture and will get Mr. Harte to drill down into some of the specifics. As regards building resilience and what the Government should do on a larger scale, we have to be cognisant that there is no silver bullet and that it is a mammoth task, but that should not mean that we should not do it. Deputy Ó Murchú mentioned Cambridge Analytica. I think back on probably one of the most innovative campaigns we ever did for the Brexit referendum, which was on voter registration. We did our #PhoneAFriend campaign, whereby we encouraged the 5 million British people who can claim an Irish-born grandparent to register and to vote. We also informed the British people living in Ireland that they had the right to vote as well as the Irish people living in the UK. By doing that, we managed to outline some factual elements to the wider Irish-UK-EU relationship, and it really resonated among different cohorts.

As regards voter apathy and building resilience, we should not lose sight of the fact that we should continue to be ambitious in that regard. Voter turnout in the Irish European Parliament elections has declined. It went down to 49.7%, under the EU average, the last time. We want to see that increase. There is a role for political parties to promote increased voter participation and engagement. We have to work with social media platforms in that regard, foster a culture of critical thinking, try to encourage young people to vote and engage with those audiences on the platforms they are on with regard to flexible voting options and building up awareness. There is also a duty and a responsibility on people to vote and engage, and the Government can do only so much in that regard. There is that onus and responsibility on us, working very closely with civil society organisation, to promote increased voter participation among their stakeholders as well.

On the specifics of some of our disinformation work, I will hand over to Mr. Harte.