Ms Anna Morgan:

I thank Deputy O'Sullivan for his comments and questions. The negative experience of the lady to whom he referred reinforces the need outlined in our written submissions for an adequate regulatory regime, which is missing currently, to tackle these types of situation where what is essentially user-generated content is at issue. As we noted in our submissions, the data protection regime has not been set up with the policy objective of dealing with such content moderation issues. Consequently, there is a gap in the law.

The lady's experience also reinforces the need for measures that are responsive and contain some form of immediacy, given the nature of the serious harms to which the Deputy referred in that case. All of this goes back to the point that the DPC made in our written submissions: the data protection regime is not set up to tackle those sorts of issue and does not aim to, and therefore does not have the power to issue immediate takedown notices. That is why we welcome the new regime heralded by the general scheme of this Bill, which we hope will have the potential to tackle the types of issue that have been referred to in the Deputy's recounting of that experience.