Mr. Art O'Leary:

Some of this has been overtaken by the Digital Services Act. There are new EU regulations on online political advertising which have overtaken that. I am assured by the Department that there will be legislation to deal with that in advance of the 2029 elections, so that will give us an opportunity.

In the absence of hard regulatory powers, we created a framework. We got all the social media companies into a room and agreed a framework on what we expected from them about the transparency of online advertising and the use of AI. The increasing use of AI needs to be both labelled properly and appropriate. Also, there is the use of misinformation and disinformation content with a view to misleading people in respect of the electoral process. We have been very impressed by our engagement with the social media companies. The Deputy was sceptical about that the last time we spoke. I cannot say that he was wrong or that I was right, because we have been fortunate in this country that we have not come across any evidence of the use of misinformation or disinformation which might impact on electoral integrity. We will have another opportunity to examine this. Perhaps the election in October, because it is a very different type of election, that the opportunity might be greater here but we have systems in place to make sure that we can deal with that properly.