Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies who have contributed to this discussion. I am grateful to the committee, under the chairmanship of Deputy O'Mahony, for the manner in which it went about preparing the report. This can be an emotive issue, for reasons everyone understands, which Deputy Colreavy advanced in his contribution. It is one of these issues that takes off in the media generally from time to time, especially if there is a tragic or regrettable incident relating to the misuse or abuse of technology. In those circumstances, it is easy to understand why parents and teachers are concerned that the State take adequate steps in the protection and safeguarding of children and minors in particular. This issue can be emotive and it is a tribute to the work of the committee that it managed to absorb everything while at the same time giving a considered judgment to the issues that were thrown up and the recommendations it made.

An important contribution has been made by the committee. I would like us to debate the issue in the House again in the not too distant future, perhaps when the Internet content governance advisory group makes its report, and to hear from a wider cross-section of Members than is feasible during a Friday sitting. I know from the contacts we have had that a great many Members have expressed similar sentiments to the Deputies who contributed and it is important that, apart from drawing attention to the importance of freedom of expression and the fact that the Internet is undoubtedly a public good, we acknowledge the necessity for balance and for the State to take reasonable measures, consistent with not unreasonably intruding on freedom of expression, to modernise the safeguards that might be put in place.

Little enough attention has been devoted to the Internet content governance advisory group established late last year under the chairmanship of Dr. Brian O'Neill of DIT. Dr. O'Neill is the head of the school of media in DIT and he has written at considerable length on this and related issues. The group also comprises Mary Aitken, a cyberpsychologist and a director of the cyberpsychology research centre at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and a research fellow at the RCSI Institute of Leadership; Professor Joe Carthy, dean of science at UCD and director of the UCD centre for cyber-security and cyber-crime investigation; Áine Lynch, chief executive officer of the National Parents' Council; Kate O'Sullivan, vice president of corporate affairs at UPC; Ronan Lupton, a barrister specialising in the areas of commercial law, chancery, defamation and intellectual property, copyright and competition law, who has spent 12 years in various regulatory and engineering roles in the Internet and communications market; and young Mark Caffrey, a transition year student in Ratoath College, County Meath, and former president of the Irish Secondary Schools Students' Union. The group, therefore, has specialists, experts, parents and a young person, a gender mix and so on. It is not easy to assemble such an expert team pro bono and I am grateful to its members for these acts of good citizenship to address an issue that is always of concern to parents and teachers and that ought to be of concern to society as well.

There is a very good balance of industry experts, parents and young people. The advisory group has begun its public consultation today. That ought to be promulgated and people who have views and concerns ought to make their input, as invited by Dr. Brian O'Neill. I think it is part of the formal terms of reference that it will be required to take account of the report published by the joint Oireachtas committee in its discussions. It will also meet the major companies, child protection bodies and parents' organisations. Between the public consultation process and these formal meetings, it will consider itself to be well placed to meet the May deadline to bring forward a report on this issue. For that reason, it would not be appropriate for me to engage in a point by point commentary on the matters raised by colleagues in the House. Deputy John O'Mahony raised the issue of take-down policy, while other colleagues raised issues that were equally relevant. The time to have that discussion is after publication of the report of the Internet governance advisory group. I have seen what the joint Oireachtas committee stated in its report about these issues and, to be honest, I share a great deal of it, but we will wait until we receive the report of the advisory group. I suggest it would be appropriate at that time for the Chief Whip to roster a discussion in the House.

I am grateful to the Oireachtas joint committee for addressing a thorny issue in modern day Irish society. It is ironic that I was deputising earlier for my colleague, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Jimmy Deenihan, on an issue that shows the two Irelands, the Private Members' Bill introduced by Deputy Niall Collins on the abolition of the Censorship of Publications Board and the Censorship Appeals Board. The past is indeed a foreign country, but it is a coincidence and an irony that in the course of the one parliamentary sitting we have had a debate on the 1924 and subsequent Acts relating to censorship and now are discussing how we can assert some accountability in the era of the Internet. This shows the dramatic change that has taken place in recent decades. Without doubt, we will be returning to this debate in the near future.

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