Ms Alex Cooney:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to address the committee today. We recognise that the Internet is a powerful and ubiquitous resource in Ireland today. It plays a hugely important role in all of our lives and can provide a beneficial educational resource for children. While the Internet brings us opportunities that we could not have imagined 20 years ago, it also brings risks, particularly for children. The Internet was not designed with children in mind. It is not always a safe and secure environment for them to be in. Social media apps and games are designed to encourage their users to use them compulsively and to share personal information extensively. These are environments that many adults struggle to understand and manage effectively, never mind their children.

As children access the Internet from an increasingly young age - seven years in Ireland - we are seeing more problematic incidents arising from its use at home, at school and in the press. Children are spending many unsupervised hours online. Our latest survey of 650 children found that 16% were online for more than four hours a day. Children are sharing too much personal data. Many children we spoke to admit to not using privacy settings. Some 12% of the children we spoke to had featured in a YouTube video, despite that being a particularly public platform. In one class alone, we found that 17 of the nine to ten year olds had featured in videos.

The health and well-being of children is being adversely impacted through their overdependence on social media for social and emotional support, with verified adverse consequences for their self-esteem and wider mental health. Cyberbullying is a growing problem in schools across Ireland and is often the reason we are called into a school in the first place. Children are being exposed to inappropriate and harmful content. A 2017 report by the NSPCC in the UK found that 28% of children aged 11 to 12 years had looked at pornography online. Of great concern in the context of the report is that over half of the 11 to 16 year old boys surveyed found what they had seen to be realistic.

We are also concerned about the sexual abuse and exploitation of children online. We are aware of several cases that have come to the attention of Irish and international law enforcement, each involving hundreds of victims of sexual extortion and grooming. We are equally concerned about problems of self-generation of sexual imagery by children at increasingly young ages and with the associated problems of peer-on-peer abuse that can result from this behaviour.

What can we do to solve the problem in Ireland? We need Government leadership. Two weeks ago, the UK Government introduced its Green Paper on Internet safety for consultation. This paper's stated intention was to make the UK the safest place to be a child online. While we can debate the value of the range of measures it proposes, there can be no doubt that the UK is much further along in its discussion on how to keep children safe online. We need to be having these kinds of conversations in Ireland, led by our Government. At the moment it is difficult to know where responsibility for children's online safety and well-being sits. Is it with the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the Department of Justice and Equality, the Department of Health, or the Department of Children and Youth Affairs? Should it sit with a separate body comprising cross-departmental representation?

We need prevention. We strongly believe that the most effective response is prevention through education. We must equip our young Internet users with the skills and knowledge that they need to navigate the online world safely, responsibly and in ways that are respectful of others. This provision cannot be offered unsystematically, as it is now, to those children who are lucky enough to live in a location where an online safety expert is available. This provision must be made available to all children in every corner of the country, wherever a child may be online. Digital literacy that encompasses online safety education will need to become the fourth pillar of our education system, alongside reading, writing and arithmetic.

We need awareness. We must ensure that parents are engaged in their children's online lives. Too often, parents tell us that they feel overwhelmed or challenged or that they simply do not know where to start. "My child knows more than I do", is a common refrain on feedback forms. We need parents to understand the risks and to address those risks at home in an ongoing fashion. We need a national awareness campaign targeting parents that creates social norms around online safety, much in the way that we have had over the years with road safety and healthy eating campaigns. We must get to a place where no parent can say, "I did not know any better."

We need to respond effectively. Even with the best will in the world, things will still go wrong. Children's photos and videos will be shared without consent and some will go viral. Inappropriate contact will be made with children and bullying will happen. We have a duty of care to ensure that, when children are harmed online, the child at the centre of it all is protected and supported in the best way possible. The best way we can do that is by ensuring that the response is timely and appropriate and that the helpline to which the child or parent reaches out is equipped to offer sound advice, support and resources; that the teacher, social worker or garda dealing with the issue has the skills and knowledge he or she needs to work sensitively with parents and children to safeguard the child effectively and minimise harm and anxiety; and that the social media platforms and telecoms companies are highly responsive to children's needs and that the takedown rate, where needed, is fast.

There is no way that any one organisation can solve the issue of online safety for children in isolation. CyberSafeIreland, as the Irish children’s charity for online safety, is willing and ready to lend its expertise where it can add value, but ultimately we must work together to deliver solutions. The Government must lead the way in tackling this issue by showing clear leadership, by creating a national strategy and a task force on online safety for children, and by appointing a digital safety commissioner and resourcing his or her office appropriately.

We must invest in education. We must ensure that every child benefits from a good education on online safety, digital rights, citizenship and well-being and that, when things go wrong, the child at the centre will be effectively protected. We need to be doing so much more to respond comprehensively to this issue. Problems of online safety are becoming increasingly urgent for children and parents around the country. They have the potential to impact on the future of every online child in Ireland.

We are encouraged that the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs has invited us and others to speak on these issues and we hope that this interest will translate in time into greater leadership on and investment in keeping all of our children safe online.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak today. We look forward to the members' questions.