Dr. Maggie Brennan:

I will start with the question on research and the availability of statistical information. A concern is that if we are to begin to establish task forces and to develop policy that is appropriate for the needs of Irish children in relation to online safety, the required information should be there to inform that policy. I am a great believer in evidence-driven policy. A risk in this space is that we do not want to be led only by the examples of good practice that exist and are available from other countries because there are very specific needs and trends that present for Irish children in terms of their online use and digital behaviours that need to be addressed in a case-specific fashion.

I believe a lot of the work that has been advanced by Professor Brian O'Neill, who sits on our board, has been done with the support of the European Commission under the aegis of broader programmes such as EU Kids Online that was spearheaded by Professor Sonia Livingstone and currently the Better Internet for Kids initiative, which again is a European Commission-funded initiative. The kinds of information such reports provide and the reports we do based on our own research are important. It is broad and sweeping and gives us a sense of the scale of the use and the kind of apps and services they are using and the associated risks, for example. What it does not tell us, however, and which is a permanent gap in terms of most of the research evidence in this space, is what children themselves need. One of the things that makes our own research stand apart is that we are very concerned to listen to what children are telling us rather than just surveying them and seeing how many nine to 16 year olds are using WhatsApp or any other messaging service. That does not give us very useful information from a targeting perspective in terms of targeting messages and speaking to and responding to the issues that are being faced by children. In terms of the sufficiency of the research evidence in the Irish space, it is great that we have the statistical information that is available to us, but I have a concern that it does not dip low enough in terms of the lower age bracket at which children are starting to use the Internet. We know that children are online at a much younger age than, for example, nine years. We need to know more about their experiences, what it is to grow up as an Internet user in Ireland and to bring the child's voice to this debate as well.

In terms of the task force, who should sit on it and where it might sit in relation to the office of a digital safety commissioner, that is an open question. I worked in the UK for a number of years for the National Crime Agency's child exploitation and online protection command in a research and policy role, and at that time the Home Office established a task force for child protection on the Internet, which is now the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. That sat within and across the justice and home affairs area at the time but it has now expanded beyond that, in particular with the increasing issues around children's Internet usage. It is not so much a criminal problem anymore. It still is a criminal problem in terms of the kinds of imagery that are being generated, but it is also a social problem that extends into all sorts of issues relating to education, in particular in the prevention space.

Regarding who would sit on the task force, many of the stakeholders have already been named, such as the telecommunications industry, representatives of academia and representatives from the charitable sector, which is particularly the case in Ireland because so many of our preventative responses rely on that third sector at present. Obviously, there would be representation from the appropriate Departments. I believe a cross-departmental body would be preferable. The role in respect of the commissioner would have to be advisory. There would have to be some independent advisory body that is advising the commissioner rather than sitting within the office of the commissioner. There must be independence because the issues I am discussing are complex, social, nuanced and dynamic. They change and therefore the relative roles of the stakeholders in this task force will change over time.