Ms Niamh Hodnett:

The Deputy asked a number of questions. If I have forgotten any of them, he should pull me up on it. The era of self-regulation is definitely over and we are now into effective regulation. As I said, we have a suite of regulatory tools, namely, the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, which is underpinned by sanctions of up to 10% of relevant turnover or €20 million, whichever is the greater; the Digital Services Act, where we act together with the European Commission in respect of the large platforms and which is underpinned by sanctions of 6%; and the terrorist content online Regulation, where we act together with the Garda Síochána and which is underpinned by sanctions of up to 4% of relevant turnover. These are significant financial sanctions which move the dial regarding the conversation about online safety and effective regulation.

There are also provisions in our Online Safety and Media Regulation Act for criminal sanctions to be taken in respect of directors for particular measures. That is another significant tool. It is not just the criminal sanctions and civil sanctions. Under the Act, we can request information or appoint auditors to monitor what is going on.

Our online safety code will be very much a binding online safety code, with set measures contained within it. We are currently reviewing the 1,300 submissions we received from our consultation in December. We will be deciding what we need to change, not in a regulatory capture way but in light of all the submissions we have received. Are we staying with our draft online safety code or are we making amendments in light of the submissions we have received, as part of that consultation process, from NGOs, platforms and also the European Commission? At that point, we will then decide if we move to adopt our online safety code or if we need to engage in a further process with the European Commission under the 2015 technical regulations information system, TRIS, directive. Under this directive, if we are going to impose additional obligations, such as our supplementary measures, we are required to engage with the European Commission in a process that typically takes three to four months and take on board its comments before we can move to final adoption. We will certainly have the online safety code this year, but there are still a number of steps we need to go through before we can finalise that.

We consulted our youth advisory committee on our online safety code in January last. All three of us were involved in that consultation. We had a very positive meeting with our youth advisory committee which represents youth aged under 25. Half of the members are individuals under 25 and half represent children and young people's views. We took comfort from their very positive feedback on our draft online safety code. It is not won and done. We are maintaining an ongoing conversation with members of our youth advisory committee on a range of matters and will continue to meet with them this year as the code progresses to update them on how their views have been taken on board.

As of yesterday, we are part of the digital services board provided for under the Digital Services Act. We are the digital services co-ordinator in Ireland. There is one such body in every EU member state. As part of that digital services board, we feed through Ireland's view on the Digital Services Act. We have a special relationship with the European Commission under that Act. We were one of the first to have a co-operation agreement with the European Commission because so many of the large platforms have their Europe, Middle East, Africa, EMEA, headquarters here in Ireland.