Ms Noelle O'Connell:

To follow on from Mr. Harte's point, when we do our candidate debates and town hall hustings, we encourage the candidates to keep the debate focused at a European level while taking on board all topics and points raised. With regard to the facts, if we can increase informed participation and education, we will build resilience and will not see as much erosion of trust in the democratic process. I know that members of this committee are very supportive and engage with students and young people. Through a simple programme, the Blue Star Programme, some 205,000 primary school pupils from the age of four up to 12 in more than 1,250 primary schools in the country over ten years have learned about geography, history, the institutions, our shared European heritage and our values in a curriculum-friendly manner. That is building up informed young people. Going up through secondary school, they study these issues in CSPE although, obviously, a lot more could be done.

To follow on from Dr. Culloty's point regarding FIMI, our counterparts in European Movement networks in eastern Europe, particularly those in the western Balkans and our Serbian colleagues after the elections in December, tell us that the challenges they face in respect of misinformation and disinformation are massive. At the level of the European Movement network, we saw that funding was provided to promote civil society organisations as regards education and engagement during the European accession process for those countries. However, the tap was turned off very quickly after accession. I would say that the results of that speak for themselves when the 2019 elections saw turnouts of 28.72% in Czechia, 28% in Slovenia, 22% in Slovakia and 29% in Croatia. A strong and robust civil society ecosystem is invaluable in combating the forces of misinformation and disinformation.