Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I was at a meeting of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. There is obviously huge interest in this Bill. This Bill has had huge media attention. I think the reason for that attention is that social media has become a favourite scapegoat of politicians, particularly of politicians from certain parties. They want to crack down on it and to introduce legislation to curb it. There is a number of reasons for this. Sometimes politicians feel that they are getting criticised on social media but it also is because social media has become a resource for ordinary people, for protest movements and for political discourse that is not allowed or permitted within the mainstream media. The idea that people could be prosecuted for putting out what some might deem to be fake news on social media is - I am sorry - absolutely reprehensible.

The first argument used is that social media is sucking advertising money away from responsible newspapers. The second is that social media does not play by the correct rules. I will give a couple of examples. The most recent example in Ireland is the campaign against water charges. For a time all of the mainstream media neglected the huge movement of opposition against water charges which was building up. It was left to people themselves to learn about it on social media. For example, the march of 100,000 people which took place in October - the famous first Right2Water march - was completely organised through social media. It is not accidental that the mainstream media had no interest in promoting the issue. It is because the mainstream media are owned and controlled by a few billionaires who do not have an interest in austerity being challenged in any way. Over a number of protests, people turned out in their hundreds of thousands. O'Connell Street was packed. However, if one examines the media coverage of the water charges protests, some of the reports would lead one to believe there was only one man and a dog out on them. It took a huge amount of time for the mainstream media to catch up.

The other, more recent, protest which has become a very convenient justification for cracking down on social media was the Jobstown protest. When the court case happened, the mainstream media reported what suited them. The headlines were about terror and bad language. They never spoke, however, of the contradictions in the evidence in the case at any time. Thankfully, when it came to the court cases themselves that evidence was brought out.

Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags have been used as organising points to put pressure on politicians and to facilitate broader discussion among people outside the realms of the mainstream media and the Dáil. Pro-choice activists have organised protest meetings and published information on the campaign on social media. These sites are absolutely vital hubs for people to organise, to highlight votes, to put pressure on the political parties and to support their demands. This should be supported and defended. During the Jobstown trial, social media played a key role in publicising some of the key issues central to the case. Videos were produced by the campaign, some of which were viewed more than a million times. The campaign's hashtag was tweeted hundreds of thousands of times. The clear differences between the opinions of some journalists and politicians and those opinions expressed on social media were stark and showed how out of touch those journalists and politicians are.

This Bill would be highly dangerous in respect of industrial disputes. Fianna Fáil has said that the Bill is not aimed at the right or the left and that it is not ideological, however the provision which seeks to include social media campaigning in respect of industrial disputes shows that it is clearly aimed at those who would challenge the system or take action against employers or powerful corporate interests. Workers and campaigners should have the right to defend their interests using the media they control, not the millionaire and billionaire-controlled media which they do not. The Luas strike in 2016 showed what would happen if workers sat around waiting for the mainstream media to report their strikes fairly. They would be waiting a long time. Every day, media outlets were calling for them to be sacked and for scab operations to be put in place. They were claiming the workers were holding the country to ransom. It is rare that the media find a strike they are not against, in any case.

If social media is closed to the vast majority of people for campaigning on political issues it will become a swamp controlled by the establishment parties, product placement and corporate interests. People have the right to use whatever forum they want to speak out, campaign and organise. This Bill attempts to curtail free speech. I notice the Bill only seems to apply to some people on social media. In the last general election, Fine Gael apparently spent €140,000 on social media advertising. Clearly when politicians want to use social media, they do. The Bill should be opposed.

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