Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Attempts to thwart democracy are as old as democracy itself. There is a long and less than distinguished history of state and non-state actors alike engaging in such activities. Moreover, many states, including Ireland, have adopted a series of measures to reduce the risk of this occurring, including rules on the transparency of media ownership and the use of funds from international sources for political activity.

As everyone in the House will be aware, there are significant indications that various recent elections around the world have seen concerted attempts to manipulate public opinion by exploiting online media, including carefully targeted online advertising and the use of social media to manipulate the views of small but significant components of the electorate. This is a very serious issue. It appears that entities are exploiting the legal protections we have regarding freedom of speech, online as well as offline, to turn social media and online advertising into an antidemocratic tool.

These technologies and services are rightly heralded as being profoundly useful for democracy. They allow discourse and debate on political issues to be opened up to everyone, no matter where they live. However, it seems clear that they also allow actors to target and manipulate public opinion in previously unheard of ways. Moreover, this activity is particularly invidious because available countermeasures are so few and so difficult for democracies to grasp. These techniques work precisely because democracies allow for and facilitate freedom of speech. Democracies do not censor media or intimidate journalists. Democracies do not control access to the Internet or seek to control political speech on online platforms. Those who seek to manipulate elections in Europe and America know this and see it as a weakness they might exploit.

As Deputy Lawless has outlined, there is a significant issue here, one that we as a Parliament and as a democracy cannot ignore. Action is being taken in this area, but more can be done. I thank Deputy Lawless for facilitating this debate. While I recognise the Bill seeks to raise important issues in respect of the proper functioning of our democracy and of the security of the State, I am afraid that I cannot support it as it stands.

The Bill seeks to engage in extremely complex issues in a very broad and general way. While it has a number of practical and factual issues and a series of inherent difficulties in terms of implementation-related issues perhaps the most serious issue with the Bill is the unintended consequences it would have for the democratic process itself.

I fully acknowledge that the thrust of the Bill is aimed at reducing the risk of external actors seeking to create false political campaigns. However, it seeks to legislate for very specific issues in an extremely broad manner and in a way that would likely give rise to a number of unintended consequences that would make the situation worse rather than better.

First, the definition of a "political end' is so broad that the Bill essentially prohibits the spending of public money of any kind on advertising online any matter dealt with by the State or funded by the State in any way, for example, the Bill as it stands could prohibit a public meeting organised by a local authority on the proposed closure of a landfill. Equally, because the Bill makes no provision for the enforcement of the measures contained in it, it essentially places the responsibility for making the decision on what is or is not political advertising in the hands of online advertisers and social media companies.

In both the case of the prohibition of the use of public funds in section 3 and the proposed transparency notice system in section 5, it means that private operators based outside the State would be required to make decisions fundamental to the functioning of democracy as to who is or is not allowed advertise. In that context, it is entirely possible that reputable companies would chose not to carry political advertising.

Perversely, parties based outside the State are not bound by this measure at all, meaning that the Bill summarily fails to deliver on its stated purpose of providing greater transparency in online advertising and may even make the situation worse because of its effect in suppressing legitimate advertising by the State or anyone in receipt of State funding.

The Bill provides the Minister, currently me, with significant powers regarding the standards to be set. These could be implemented without recourse to anyone else with the simple stroke of a pen on the cusp of an election. That is a significant power to place in the hands of any one individual.

The legislation is weak in ignoring the rightful role that should be played by the Standards in Public Office Commission.

Having read the Bill, I, as an Independent Member, believe that it gives significant powers to a political party's headquarters over individual candidates and also over Independent candidates. Having experience of being within and outside political parties, I would have concerns about that. Perhaps most critically, the Bill could have the effect of placing unintended prohibitions on political advertising in a number of ways, including by potentially banning the advertising of Deputies' clinics, both online and offline, if the paper is published in electronic form. Identifying the owner of a social media account is not an easy or straightforward task. In many cases, both the platform and the individual will be outside the State and beyond the reach of this Bill. In addition, the majority of online advertising is programmatic and placed by third-party online advertising sales houses rather than the online platforms themselves.

At the very heart of this discussion is the set of principles that are central to the way we deal with both media and the emerging challenges associated with the Internet. As Minister, I have stated repeatedly that Ireland will continuously promote an open, global, free, peaceful and secure cyberspace where fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly the right to freedom of expression, access to information, data protection and privacy and security, as well as the EU core values and principles, are fully applied and respected both within the EU and globally. Once we start to tamper with online free speech or try to police who does or does not have the right to use social media, we run the risk of becoming more like those who would abuse the system in the first instance.

Deputy Lawless has identified a very serious issue but I am concerned that this draft legislation will create more problems than it solves. I respectfully suggest that the best way of dealing with this would be to draw together a group of experts to examine the issues, including us, as professional politicians, electoral law specialists and people from within the relevant Departments. The best entity to structure this group is the Committee on Procedure, which is headed by the Ceann Comhairle.

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