Ms Áine Lynch:

I have a quick general comment that touches on something Fionn brought up earlier. One of the risks when developing policy around online activity is that we separate it from offline activity. For young people, they are the same. We need to look at this within the context of young people's lives. When we look at it in that context and at vulnerable children, who are often the children most harmed by technologies, we are sitting in a system where we have a child and adolescent mental health crisis in this country and a crisis around services. The children we are seeing most affected and impacted by some of the online dangers are the very children who cannot access the services and supports they need to develop the resilience they need. It can be really risky if we only look at AI in terms of legislation and supports around AI because these are young people who are living their lives every day and we have waiting lists for child and adolescent mental health services that are far too long. Unless we invest in that, we will continuously have children at risk from Internet AI and everything else. That is a general comment.