Ms Niamh Hodnett:

Once the online safety code is in place, we can apply sanctions for the infringement of that. The Digital Services Act has been in place since Saturday, 17 February, and is fully applicable. We or the European Commission can take enforcement action against the large platforms. Of the platforms that are still large but do not fall into the category of “very large online platforms” under the Digital Services Act, we are the responsible regulator for the ones that are established in Ireland.

The Senator asked whether we were proactively monitoring. We have established a supervision and enforcement team, which will proactively deal with the various platforms within its remit and escalate issues to the enforcement team where an investigation is warranted. Our contact centre, which we established yesterday, is taking complaints about breaches of the Digital Services Act. We just stood it up yesterday, so it is still new for us, but we will be assisting people who wish to raise complaints or queries. Where breaches of the Digital Services Act come to our attention, it helps us with market monitoring and building a picture of various platforms’ compliance with their obligations.