Mr. Jeremy Godfrey:

I thank the committee for inviting us to appear today. I am joined, as the Cathaoirleach stated, by my colleagues Ms Stephanie Comey and Mr. Tiernan Kenny.

Coimisiún na Meán's overall purpose is to ensure a thriving, diverse, creative, safe and trusted media landscape. This plays a crucial role in supporting our open democratic society.

Disinformation and misinformation can undermine democracy and may require, as Mr. Hempenstall said, a cross-societal approach. Coimisiún na Meán has contributed to the national counter-disinformation strategy working group. We expect to have a significant role in implementing the actions arising from the strategy. I would like to highlight three ways in which we help address the challenge of disinformation, namely our regulation of online platforms, our promotion of media literacy and our promotion of reliable and trustworthy journalism.

The recent elections to the European Parliament and the local and Limerick mayoral elections were the first elections held since the EU Digital Services Act became fully applicable earlier this year. We worked with the European Commission and our counterparts in other member states on the development of guidelines as to how platforms should analyse and respond to the threats posed by disinformation and misinformation. We co-ordinated the implementation of the guidelines in Ireland. This included facilitating collaboration between the platforms based here, An Coimisiún Toghcháin and accredited fact-checkers. While a full review of the elections and the effectiveness of the guidelines is pending, the European Digital Media Observatory has noted that there were no large-scale, last-minute disinformation incidents.

However, overall levels of online disinformation about the EU increased significantly in the months before the vote. There were also incidents of online abuse of electoral candidates. We provided candidates with a briefing pack on their rights. We will review how we can improve the effectiveness of the mechanisms for protecting participants in public life from online hate speech and harassment.

We have long promoted media literacy through our support of Media Literacy Ireland. This initiative aims to counter disinformation by equipping people to evaluate information. The initiative also aims to increase awareness about the ownership, operation and regulation of the media landscape. This helps citizens make informed choices about what they see, read and share online.

We collaborate on media literacy initiatives with our regulatory counterparts and media literacy experts across Europe in order that we can identify and apply best practices in media literacy. We also helped to localise and promote pan-European media literacy campaigns associated with the recent elections.

Trusted journalism plays an important role in promoting information integrity and countering disinformation. We support trust in broadcast journalism with our rules requiring fairness, accuracy and balance in news and current affairs. We also recognise the role of public service media in providing reliable journalism and deploying it online as well as in traditional broadcast bulletins.

We have begun a review of the broadcasting moratorium to consider if it is still effective and useful in the shifting media landscape. We expect to have that review concluded later this year.

We intend to open applications for our first two journalism schemes focusing on reporting on district courts and the activities of local authorities shortly. While the schemes are not designed to address fake news, a thriving and pluralistic news media landscape can help to meet the challenges of disinformation and fake news. The Future of Media Commission report recommended the creation of five journalism schemes. We look forwarding to bringing these to life in due course.