Ms Orla Twomey:

We look at advertising that may cause offence and advertising that may be in breach of other areas of the code slightly differently. One complaint can initiate an investigation. As for complaints about misleading material, the environment and so on, most such ads will see only one or two complaints. We need only one complaint to start an investigation. When it comes to a matter of the offensiveness of an advertisement, we tend to look at the strength of the reaction we have received and the number of complaints received in a short period. We have our complaints committee and it makes the final adjudication. It is not for me to decide that the Irish consumer should find a particular ad offensive. We look at how many complaints we get and whether that indicates a level of offence. That is very much separate from the question as to whether someone makes a complaint about an ad that makes a certain claim, whether about the climate or otherwise, and says he or she believes that the claim is wrong. If the ad and the medium are within our remit, we will take up and investigate the complaint, sometimes on the basis of just one complaint. We see those as very different types of complaint.

As for the monitoring, and as I mentioned in my opening statement, we are very fortunate to have had the support of EASA, which has been working with partners to develop AI tools. From a monitoring perspective, there have been programmes done in other countries. France, in particular, has done a monitoring programme on environmental claims online to capture sustainability claims. That is the type of thing we would look to do in the future, that is, how we can bring that expertise into our organisation to look at that.