Ms Cliodhna O'Neill:

Ms Long described the Law Reform Commission report as a great piece of work. I agree with her. One of the interesting aspects of the report is that it effectively states that the law alone cannot fix this issue and that education will be key. The Law Reform Commission does not often make such an admission, which makes this a remarkable piece of work in terms of adopting education measures. We need to listen to its views on this issue. The Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality has indicated that many of the legislative recommendations will be implemented, which is great, but her Department is not responsible for implementing the educational aspects of the report.

A question was asked on the proposal to establish an office of digital safety commissioner. The Law Reform Commission examined the role of the office of Internet safety and one of the issues it identified was with the office's location in the Department of Justice and Equality. The ISPCC has a role in this area through the advisory committee and we understand it is planned to move the office of Internet safety to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. In our view, the proposed office of digital safety commissioner would be better placed in either the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment or the Department of Justice and Equality.

A question was also asked on the Garda. The ISPCC regularly interacts with the Garda and we hope to do more work with the force later this year.

On support for parents, as many members will be aware from our conference, the ISPCC has a partnership with Vodafone based on a shared vision of keeping children safe by keeping them connected. As part of this, we have developed some guidelines and support for parents and we will roll out more later in the year through a magazine that will be available nationwide. We hope this will contribute to support for parents but many other organisations are doing good work in this area. Resources were launched for parents as part of Internet safety day last week. The issue is one of disseminating these resources and ensuring parents are aware of them.