Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael)
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I apologise for coming in late on the meeting. I have a few questions. We did a lot of work on the Future of Media Commission report that came out a couple of years ago. If I am correct, the figures demonstrated over 70% trust in mainstream media and less than 30% in online media. That was because there is a significant amount of disinformation across online media. It is important therefore to see the supports that we have in the budget, that is, the €6 million set aside for independent broadcasters. We need to support the tried and tested media, be that written, radio or television that is putting out correct information. I have a few questions about things we have discussed at committee meetings before. We met Coimisiún na Meán and speaking as a parent, our eldest is 12 years old and starting secondary school, which has opened my eyes to media, phones, etc., and the difficulties parents have. Coimisiún na Meán is looking at having minimum ages for social media accounts and putting the responsibility back on social media companies, which is something I believe in myself. They are making mult-billions, we are in the age of AI, etc. I cannot see putting proper age verifications in place to reduce the number of young kids on social media as being a huge difficulty. We have seen statistics of kids as young as eight, nine and ten years of age on the various platforms, be they TikTok or Snapchat, etc. What are our witnesses' views on that?

On an issue that has come up in the budget, I was at Moyne Community School here in Longford on Monday talking to TY and third year students. The big issue that came up with them for me as a public representative was the idea of these wallets for their phones in schools that is being put forward. They are totally against it but the reality is that we have students in schools who, when they have access to their phones, are accessing social media during the day and even during classes and that is going to have an effect on their education. Do the witnesses have views on that and what would be an alternative? There were very differing views in the two classes that I met.

One class would have been in favour of phones and not having access between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. while the other would not accept that and was in favour of the phone being on the teacher's desk during the class but the pupil getting it back afterwards. Regarding the challenges around social media, we need to ingrain this into our education system at primary level to make sure that children are aware and information needs to be sent home to parents because a lot of parents are not aware of what is on social media or actually understand social media or the various platforms. What are the witnesses' views regarding the minimum age and access to phones in schools, etc.?