Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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It is a seismic change in society that the greatest threat to our children is the mobile phone. God be with the days when we were all afraid of the bogeyman around the corner who we believed would do whatever to us but the biggest threat to children now is carried in our pockets.

In terms of this committee, an over-arching body of work is needed to get a whole-of-Government strategy and legislation to catch up with this area. The difficulty is that the Internet is ever-changing and therefore the threats are ever-changing, with new ones emerging all the time. It is difficult to keep up legislatively in terms of getting the curriculum changed and having all the bodies dealing with this area talking to each other. I do not believe this Government will last the length of time needed to try to achieve the establishment of a commissioner's office and so on.

In terms of this committee trying to focus on one aspect and having listened to all the contributors, and in terms of our own bias, many of us are parents and we have a particular concern. We understand the issues very well but there is fear in dealing with this issue. The words "Instagram", "Snapchat" and others terrify parents. We hear terms such as "All you have to do is fix the router" or references to the modem but all those terms create a blank wall for people of a certain generation, including my own. In light of this what would be the view of the witnesses on a committee such as this one compiling a user guide for parents that would offer simple suggestions, such as children not having their phones with them in school. Parents feel that if every other child in the school has their phone with them they should allow their child to have it. Another suggestion would be to tell parents to take the phone out of the child's bedroom at night. If we suggest that a child or teenager should not be on their phone after 9 p.m., I believe parents would react positively to that because they probably feel they are the only ones not allowing that. I discovered by chance about six months ago that I could fix the modem at home and turn off the Internet for a number of hours every day.