Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will take the opportunity to pose some of my own questions. For me, it comes down to a number of areas.

I have covered this with some of the other people we have had before the committee. Coimisiún na Meán's role, as Deputy Howlin alluded to earlier, involves almost a conflict between its declared role in the supervision and doing that in conjunction with the platforms and not being a vehicle for censorship or restriction in any way. It is disappointing that the European guidelines are still not finalised. They are meant to be finalised only by Easter. If you are living in a political world, the European elections are well and truly under way. It is disappointing that this has not been formally sorted out. The guidelines all sound very good and very reasonable but they are guidelines.

It comes down to the following. First, what happens if the companies do not play ball and do not respond to the guidelines? I want the witnesses to clarify that. This was asked earlier and, to be honest, the answer was a bit nebulous. The European Union is very fond, through the Commission, in various areas, of saying, "One per cent of your global turnover, lads, for a breach of whatever it is you have done." I presume there is nothing even remotely close to that. I had an engagement with these platforms probably five or six years ago, and the cumulative spend by most of them on what they were using or doing to enforce content moderation was probably way less than one day's profit. These are corporations that make billions and billions. That gives a very clear indication of where their thinking was at that time. I appreciate that Mr. Godfrey said Coimisiún na Meán is in only a start-up phase and has had only very initial engagement with the platforms. I am sorry to be so sceptical about this but I wish Coimisiún na Meán luck with its engagement. The platforms are very good at sounding as if they will do something but, realistically, they sound like they will do one thing and do another, without proper engagement or real strength. The guidelines sound good, but I am asking if there is any strength in them or any repercussions - real repercussions - for breach of the guidelines. In the absence of that, I do not think we will see any change at all.

Coimisiún na Meán has a very difficult job. There is no question about that. As the witnesses know, there are those out there who will seek to undermine Coimisiún na Meán from day one. They will try to make it out to be a puppet of the State and a untrustworthy source. It will have to contend with that on one side and, at the same time, unfortunately, with the platforms. We are not talking about censorship here. We are just talking about trying to take out the nastiest extremist elements of complete falsehood and, even more worrying to me, particularly in the context of what we have been discussing in the past few weeks, dealing with that vile element that is actually targeting and threatening individuals. It is not making any type of political content but is targeting from the most vulnerable in society, such as immigrants arriving into our country, to political leaders, to people who just happen to be for some reason on the public platform for one moment. I am really interested to hear whether the witnesses think Coimisiún na Meán has enough of an ability in that regard.

I want to change the question to the witnesses slightly. There has been no real talk about TV moderation, but it is part of Coimisiún na Meán's remit. By and large, we have very good mainstream television broadcasting, but we do have a proliferation of niche channels - the likes of GB News - that are supplied through platforms. Some of those channels have put on air people who would not necessarily get a platform otherwise. Is there any regulatory role in that regard? We had an example on a pan-European basis where Russia Today was eventually removed from most services. Is there anything within Coimisiún na Meán's remit in that regard? Particularly in a European context, some of the messaging that comes out then gets packaged into neat 30-second snippets and either put up on YouTube or rebroadcast through social media channels. That area is a concern as well, and we have not touched on it at all.

Those are my two main questions to the witnesses.