Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In wrapping up, and responding on behalf of the Labour Party, I thank Deputy Howlin for drafting the Bill. I thank all parties for their support for the Bill. I thank the Government for facilitating the Bill in its onward trajectory.

I am disappointed at the response of the Minister, Deputy Naughten, through the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, to the issue. There has never been a more opportune and pertinent time for this legislation to be passed through the Dáil in a timely fashion because of the gravity of the issue at hand. For the Minister of State to come before the House and state there will be an open policy debate on 8 March after which the Minister will then come back and consult with his colleagues suggests that the Minister is embarking on another consultative process that will falter and run into the ground.

Members of the Minister of State's party along with me and others are members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs. We have had ongoing engagement with the telecommunications providers on the need for safety and a legislative mechanism to ensure safety on the Internet.

It is not appropriate to engage in another open policy debate given that we have had the 2013 independent expert Internet content and governance advisory group, the Law Reform Commission report and now this legislation arising from the Law Reform Commission report. There is no need for another consultation when everybody within the community knows that legislative action is needed. The parents of children do not feel confident in engaging with the technology without a 100% penetration in the schools of the programmes available. People now want guidance from this House to ensure the space children inhabit on the Internet is safe and that there are mechanisms in place to punish those who transgress. That is the purpose of the legislation.

The offence of harassment is found in the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997. This new version provides that a person who intentionally or recklessly and without lawful authority or reasonable excuse engages in harassment is subject to the punishment of a class-A fine. This allows for the development of the new media that have arisen in recent years and these new media are reflected in the legislation, making it fit for purpose.

That is what we are doing today. It is worrying that our harassment laws do not currently cover communications that we use every day, including iMessages, WhatsApp and Facebook messages. Our laws have not been updated since the invention of the text message. Young people, who are primarily the victims of cyberbullying and revenge porn, are more likely to use WhatsApp, iMessage and Snapchat to communicate with each other and we need to ensure that they are protected under our laws and that we have a legal basis that reflects these new media. While protecting freedom of expression, we need to bring the law up to date to protect people online. Revenge porn, threats, false messages and online bullying need to be stopped. There needs to be punitive action against it online. As a parent, I appreciate that children are becoming more tech-savvy than ever so it is imperative that we educate parents and teachers on the dangers on the Internet. Young people, our children, are often aware of the dangers of sharing images or video. However, they may not realise how easy it is for another person to take images and share them online. We are clear on what constitutes online bullying. The procedures recently published by the Department of Education and Skills, for instance, say "placing a once-off offensive or hurtful public message, image or statement on a social network site or other public forum where that message, image or statement can be viewed and/or repeated by other people will be regarded as bullying behaviour." It can happen to anyone.

We are here tonight to seek to ensure that this House takes a primary role by establishing a legislative framework to reflect the Law Reform Commission's report on this matter. I note the response of the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, to the Bill. We believe strongly that the Bill can be amended as needed in a fitting way. There is a clear political consensus here across the party political divide that we should ensure that punitive measures are put in place for when people transgress. The existence of the media should be recognised and the law updated to recognise it. I ask the Minister not to turn 8 March into another talking shop. I go back to the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs, a cross-party committee which has deliberated on this issue for months, going into years. It may be wonderful for people to gather on 8 March and feel like they are taking action on the issue but I suspect that, at that event, a report will be drafted arising from the interventions at that event, it will go through the machinery and nothing will happen. The Minister himself has said that he will appoint an online digital safety commissioner and that he will wait until the forum on 8 March, and that will set the foundations of the new office. If the Minister is going to wait until then, he will be waiting until kingdom come.

The Minister has an opportunity to respond to the legislation before this House which has cross-party support; seeks to identify all that is good on the Internet; recognises that organisations such as the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland are very good at take-down notices but that they cannot be policemen of the Internet and are mere conduits with regard to the content that goes across the Internet; and that we cannot expect a self-regulatory regime to persist. We believe in this party that the parents of Ireland now want a legislative and legally sound response to the fears that they have about the activities that exist on the Internet. They have been well-articulated in the debate heretofore.

We thank Members of this House for their support of this Bill and acknowledge that there have been other attempts to bring in legislation of this nature, which is an ongoing process. I think that all of us in this House have an opportunity now to do some very good non-partisan work. I hope the Minister will take a proactive approach to this legislation. If we are to capture the zeitgeist that exists throughout the homes of Ireland at present, there is a strong sense that parents want clarity on the legislation to ensure that there are punitive measures for the cases we have witnessed in recent months, in particular that of Mr. Horan. It is important to say that, in that particular case, the US authorities picked up on that gentleman's activities and made contact with the gardaí about a particular email account being used. It is important that, in the course of talking about this legislation, we ensure that the Government, through the Department of Justice and Equality, is deploying resources to the gardaí. There are not enough people deployed within the gardaí to try to tackle crimes of this nature. There needs to be a debate about the need to resource the gardaí to be able to tackle this issue, which I hope will happen in the course of this legislation.

See this speech in context