Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to tease out further something that has been touched on by my colleagues. Many witnesses, organisations and groups have appeared before the committee over the last couple of months for our pre-legislative scrutiny on this topic, including the element of reporting, the steps taken by An Garda Síochána and how tangible these tech giants are in terms of accountability. We heard repeatedly from Facebook, TikTok and the social media giants about their community standards in terms of what is acceptable online behaviour or harmful content and what is not. To my mind, and I would say for many of my colleagues, there is no benchmark for what should and should not be acceptable.

We also heard accounts of families who had seen their children receive online abuse, taken a screenshot of that abuse and reported it to the companies. Of course, that was a futile exercise, with some recounting that it was days before that content might be removed. You have touched on this already. In a scenario where a child is in primary school and the parent sees harmful content, the parent gathers as much information as he or she can and goes to the local Garda station and reports it, do you find that this can be expedited quickly through the tech giants to get to the source of the information or are there challenges put in your way in terms of sourcing the identity or shutting down that account to get rid of the harmful content? I am thinking specifically of children. In a practical sense, when a parent goes to local gardaí with as much evidence as he or she can gather on harmful content, what are the steps or how long does it take for the tech giants to respond in a meaningful way?