Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)

As and from 21 July, part B of the online safety code from Coimisiún na Meán comes into effect. This has specific obligations on preventing the uploading and sharing of harmful content and services, cyberbullying and many other things. I have requested to meet the French and Danish ministers on this. France has made very strong and robust utterances recently. Denmark will have the Presidency before us and I would like to be running in sequence. I am the father of three young children. Most of their contemporaries are watching a lot of material online. We want to make sure it is as safe as possible and we want a situation whereby online verification is the norm, whether this is something we have to do individually as a State or collectively as the European Union. I would prefer the option of doing it with the European Union because, as Senator Mullen said, a number of them are based in Ireland, which I met last week and the week before, and a number are not. I have already said, and I have said it to the Secretary General in the Department, that as far as our Presidency of the European Council of Ministers goes, the theme for the Department will be the protection of the child online. This will be the overriding principle for what we do in terms of formal and informal meetings and we have started this work.