Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

I thank the Deputy for raising this important question. It is clear this is very much at the heart of everything we do at Coimisiún na Meán across the board, in our media landscape and our online functions. Online safety is a critical area and we are committed to developing a media landscape which supports safety, particularly for children and public safety. There is currently much work going on in our organisation on this. One of the key areas I will briefly outline is the development of our online safety framework. A core element of this is the online safety code which was decided at the end of last year. A key element of that will come into effect next month. We are also engaging with platforms. Our supervision team is working with them to understand how they are enhancing safety, particularly for minors, through the implementation of this online safety code.

Under the Digital Services Act, we are also engaging with the EU Commission which has a role here. We are supporting much of the work it is doing regarding enforcement but also developing more specific guidelines for protection of minors which is, again, a critical area currently under consideration. We are working on our media literacy front to educate parents, children and users of online services of the critical skills needed to safely navigate that environment and we will launch some of our campaigns starting next month. There is a huge effort here and we are hoping to come into the Houses of the Oireachtas to give a presentation at some point on this because we welcome the support of the political system. This is a whole-of-society response in that regard.