Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

To follow on from the previous questions, I refer to the Trump Administration and the position it has taken regarding freedom of speech. Sometimes, I think people want to protect certain types of freedom of speech and not others. One can foresee that this will cause issues in terms of the work that Coimisiún na Meán, the European Commission and others want to do in this particular space.

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but the Finns have done a serious amount of work on social media, computer literacy and teaching people to analyse information and make a determination. It is not that people have to buy every conspiracy theory. We have all come across people who asked us about a particular thing they believed and we have shown them what we would say was a reputable source that tore the argument apart. We are then told that they cannot trust that, but some people want to trust a guy walking around on the street shouting and screaming who is obviously a really good source. Unfortunately, we need to get that message to people early. People are choosing to be advertised to by some really nefarious people. McDonald's, Coca-Cola and others would not spend millions of euro on advertising if it did not work.

I am very worried about the future. What can be done here about the media literacy piece? What can be done about operating a system like the Finns have?

Is the commission worried about the Trump Administration and its fight against the regulation of big tech and social media companies?