Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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To be fair to the Cathaoirleach and the committee, these guys think they are above the law. They actually are above the law. They think that because of the wealth and jobs they are creating, they do not have to have any responsibility to community, democracy or the country. To be fair to Brazil, while it might not be the most democratic country in the world, it put a bit of manners on these companies. It closed down their system. We are not powerful enough to do that here. I will say one thing, and my colleagues here will suffer this in the general election, we will have a very difficult time with misinformation. It is very unfair on candidates, if something is put up online, that it takes two or three weeks to get that misinformation taken down. They cannot recover because of that. There is not enough access to these organisations when somebody does something wrong. Have we seen anybody being brought to the courts for that? Maybe somebody can answer that. I have never seen anybody being brought to the courts for online misinformation or for slandering somebody online. That is something we need to deal with and deal with quickly.

I agree with the witnesses that the Government is not doing enough. It is because there is a vested interest, which are the jobs and the tax returns from these companies. However, what is more important - money or democracy? We have had democracy in this country for more than 100 years, but we will not have it if this continues. The kind of stuff that is going up online would not do anybody any good. I do not know how people can watch that morning, noon and night, which they do. There has to be something wrong with anyone who does that. You could not watch that kind of rubbish day in and day out.

The best thing I ever did following the most recent general election was to close down my social media altogether, and do you know something? I was the happiest man in Ireland. My head was saved and I was happy. I did not look at rubbish every morning, upsetting myself, my family and everybody else. I managed without it. I was elected over 30 years without social media. It is a nice tool to have. It is nice to be able to pick up information about travelling and this and that. It is positive when it is positive. However, what I see happening in America is awful, for example, one of the men - I cannot remember his name - working for Mr. Trump's campaign. The power that man has in the world is more than that of any president. That is the way he feels. Those are my comments.