Mr. Jeremy Godfrey:

The Senator asked about trusted flagger status and the possibility of someone having trusted flagger status for child sex abuse material. If anybody were to apply to us wanting to have trusted flagger status so that they could flag that sort of material, we would be extremely careful to make sure they had the appropriate authority to handle that material. As the Senator said, hotline.ie is already in existence for that.

With regard to the independence of the Coimisiún na Meán, there are several issues. It is in our statute that we should act independently. The commissioners are appointed following a process run by the Public Appointments Service and we follow standard public employment practices in our own recruitment.

The Senator asked who we are accountable to. Our main accountability is to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media. Our sponsoring Department is the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. We have also been accountable to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment because it is the policy Department for the DSA. We could also be accountable to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice in respect of our obligations regarding online terrorism content. We have accountability to the Committee of Public Accounts for the way we use public money. We can be held to account by the courts, through judicial review, for the legality of our decisions. There is quite an apparatus of accountability. It is not uncommon for people to write to one of the Oireachtas joint committees to ask questions or invite them to ask us to answer questions.