Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I refer to Deputy Ferris's point. People are interpreting this as us doing the bidding of the large corporations. This is not the stop on-line piracy act, SOPA. We are not extending massive powers of intervention so that we can step into the breach to try to protect one side over another. This is not SOPA legislation. This is balancing the right of a copyright holder against the right of an individual.

There are inherent rights in the charter of fundamental rights and in the e-commerce directive which give rights to the individual company to conduct its business. We must also have regard to the rights of the copyright holder, which could be a small publishing house. People perceive the copyright holder to be "big music" but it could be a small Internet publishing business, a person creating his or her own music at home. They have copyright and certain protections. I do not believe this measure will be used by big business as a tool to beat down websites. Google is one of the biggest corporations in the world and it has a right to do business here if it has an Irish or European Union domain. Those rights are protected but are not subservient to the right of the copyright holder.

I take the Deputy up on a point he made about the statutory instrument. He is infinitely more experienced than I am, as a legislator, and he will appreciate that this is not new policy and therefore a statutory instrument can apply. We are not at odds with the programme for Government in this because we are only amending legislation. I reply respectfully to the Deputy in that regard.

This is a balancing between the two. The small guy or girl who begins with the gaming industry have certain rights as copyright holders and we must protect them as much as we must protect the citizen's right to access the Internet. Proportionality is the key to this debate.

See this speech in context