Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will repeat what I said last night about everybody in this House being interested in and concerned about child protection. We all share the same objective. The question is as to the best way to do that. We cannot ignore the very strong representations we have heard from Barnardos, the Children's Rights Alliance and the ISPCC. They make a number of very cogent points. The predominant point is that raising the age of consent to 16, or whatever age, does give a false sense of security that it solves the problem when we know that simply is not the case. This is a once-off action a parent takes in handing over consent. If they say no, it means the child is denied access to that platform. If they say yes, which an awful lot of parents will do because they do not know what they are handing over, that is a problem also. If we recognise that it is a reality that many children lie online, we have to accept that it is a significant factor. Children also have ways around age verification mechanisms. If we are serious about curtailing and preventing the micro-targeting of children for commercial purposes, we have to restrict the ability of companies to target children and harvest their data.

On Committee Stage, the Minister rejected similar amendments to this. The amendments we have tabled, however, are not an additional condition of a new principle. They are within the scope of both EU jurisprudence and the GDPR. Article 6.1(f) states that processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. I would contend that the Minister is perfectly within the law to make it an offence for companies to engage in what they are doing at the moment, namely, the relentless targeting of children for commercial purposes whether it is in respect of junk food, alcohol, or gambling and other things. It is that practice that we need to outlaw.

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