Mr. Art O'Leary:

In the absence of any legislative powers, rather than standing idly by for the June elections, we engaged with the social media companies and with the political parties to agree a voluntary framework about how we treat misinformation and disinformation, AI, and online political advertising. In a short couple of weeks, Ms O'Sullivan and her team were able to thrash out a framework with social media companies, and the speed of that was unheralded because once the west coast lawyers get involved in this conversation, things tend to take years. We did it in a couple of weeks and the social media companies were happy to agree a voluntary framework, but it lacks authority and teeth. I know it is the Government's ambition to pass the new Parts 4 and 5 in advance of a general election, but that depends on the timing of the election. Let us see. We may dust that off as well just to see.

The EU action on political advertising goes beyond online political advertising, and that is the plan. It is due to start on 10 October of next year, which, ironically, will be halfway through the presidential election campaign that is likely. In those circumstances, there is a question to be asked as to whether leaflets constitute political advertising and the same arises with posters. Are posters also political advertising? We need to thrash out that detail and, if that is the case, then they fall under the regulatory umbrella of transparency, etc. There may be some form of redress there but we have not seen anything like the detail of that yet as it is a year away. It is, however, something we will be turning our minds to in the months ahead.