Ms Isabella Plunkett:

I thank the Senator for his questions. Starting with turnover, it is quite high now and has been throughout the pandemic. A new employer in Ireland, a tech giant, has taken on many of these staff because it has better conditions and pay. Equally, the contract is directly with the company concerned and not with an outsourced contractor, as ours are. People obviously see that as a huge benefit. To put an average on the time people remain in the job, I would say two years, maximum. For want of a better term, you would be burnt out by then. I came into this job, as I said in my opening statement, with positive expectations in respect of joining a big tech company and the career progression that might be possible. It was all of those positive aspects. Our job as content moderators is also very fulfilling, in a sense, because we are keeping the platform user friendly. I am sure many of the committee members have kids and other family members who are on Facebook, and there is content there that people should not see. It should not be seen by me, by kids or by anyone, even by the older generation. It is challenging.

I will give the committee an example of what we do. For the moment there are three people on my team in the office. I think there are ten on my team in total. The rest are working from home due to personal issues, perhaps because they are at high risk themselves. The difference between working from home and working in the office is that they cannot do the sensitive queues from home. This burdens the three of us in the office who are doing all the queues including the graphic violence, suicide and child exploitation queues. We are not necessarily picking up the slack but we are doing the harder tickets because nobody else can do them because there is nobody to actually do them. Of course that puts more pressure on me. I am speaking on behalf of my team-mates in work as well, and I am sure there are other people in the office in the same situation.

On mental health, I totally agree with Senator Ahearn. Then again, it was very hard for me to speak about my own mental health. I struggle to speak about it with my own family and friends so of course to come before the committee and say this was a big thing for me. You know yourself, a person might not feel comfortable talking to his or her colleagues about their mental health and would feel more comfortable with a friendly face, a mother, father, sibling or close friends. Not having the ability to do that is horrible. One feels limited, one feels alone in a sense. I do not have any better words for it really, it is just very upsetting and I hope for some kind of change not just for me but for all my colleagues.