Mr. Jeremy Godfrey:

I might pick up on some of the comments. Ms Chapman talked about prebunking. Before we get to the day of the riots, one of the things that happened was that there was fertile ground because there had been plenty of promotion of hatred against people from ethnic minorities circulating. The tinder was dry for a spark. One thing that is important is to enforce the regulatory obligations that the platforms have in respect of hate speech so that the environment is less receptive to these things. There is provision in the DSA for the creation of a crisis response protocol. On the day the Dublin riots happened and we found out about the stabbing incident, we did not have any powers at that time, but we called up the platforms and said that we had heard the news and were concerned that it might become an excuse for the promotion of hatred and violence. We did not have enough foresight to predict where it might lead. The platforms said they stood up their instant response teams but it was a one-by-one situation.

In a way we would like people's first instinct when something like this happens to be to turn on the television or the radio to seek accurate, reliable sources of information. Somebody else talked about meeting people where they are. That also means that our national broadcasters, as reliable sources of information, need to be present on social media and deploying their news on social media. Part of a crisis response protocol and we talked about recommender algorithms, could be giving prominence to reliable sources of media so that anyone who is looking for information, who may get a stream of tanks rolling up the M50, should absolutely be made to watch what RTÉ or Virgin Media or another trusted broadcaster or member of the press is putting in their videos so that they can see good stuff.

The European Commission was involved with us in our day after engagements with platforms to find out what they had done and what was happening and what they might do differently. That was the beginning of learning for the development of the crisis response protocol. That is still something that has to be worked out around the whole of Europe. Another good thing is that Ireland is not the only place prone to these kinds of crises. Making sure that a protocol is developed on a pan-European basis gives us quite a lot of heft in getting the platforms to comply or to help.