Ms Niamh Hodnett:

The Senator asked many deep questions, so if I forget any, she might revert to us and my colleagues and I will answer them.

We believe this is a whole-of-society issue. We are one part of it as the regulator and we alone will not solve it. There is a role for all of us to be more civil online and to think about digital civility in our interactions. Regarding education, good work is being done in schools by the Department of Education, Webwise and CyberSafeKids, which appeared before the committee last week. Parents need to be empowered to know how to engage with parental controls and protect our children online and what conversations we need to have with them. Most importantly, our children need to be empowered, as they are the digital natives who are managing their education, communication and social lives online. There are many positive benefits online that we want them to enjoy, for example, connection and education. There is also a role for the Legislature in passing the rules that allow us to enforce our regulation. The commission is not alone in this, as it is a whole-of-society issue. Ireland is not alone in this either. As Mr. McLoughlin and Karen McAuley alluded to, we are working closely with the European Commission, the Global Online Safety Regulators Network and a range of regulators in other countries. We have been meeting the Department of Education, the Department of children, the Department of Health and many other Departments since our establishment to understand how best to engage with all of them. We have a role in media literacy.

With our online safety code, we are imposing binding obligations for parental controls. Under those obligations, the platforms would have to have parental controls that were easy to use and easy to find. They would also be subject to binding media literacy obligations to educate children and parents in how to use those tools effectively.

We have been working closely with Webwise, which does great work under Oide and the Department of Education. Webwise has useful tools on its website for the primary school and junior cycle curriculums. Some of them are known as the Respect Effect. Webwise is working on materials for a programme for teachers in respect of AI, including education about introducing AI and knowledge about AI.

A draft EU AI Act is being finalised at the moment. It will have transparency obligations on AI. In the case of generative AI, for example, it will have to be said whether content has been generated by artificial intelligence so that it is possible for children and ourselves to be able to recognise when that happens. That is not the case at the moment and it is difficult for us to tell.