Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If the Deputy has concerns about malpractices online, he should report them to me straightaway and I would be delighted to deal with them. The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland, ASAI, was not mentioned, but it has a very important role to play. It is an independent body which is financed by the advertising industry. Consumers can also refer complaints to it. In 2017, 2,100 complaints were referred to it, of which 75 were upheld. The authority's complaints committee has also considered three complaints from online influencers since 2017. One of these complaints is the one to which the Deputy has referred, involving images of beauty bloggers which had been photoshopped and filtered. The complaint was upheld. This shows that the authority is on top of its brief. In the other two cases the committee issued a statement which read: "Members of the ASAI are required to abide by the code and not to publish or continue to publish any advertising which contravenes the code rule". Between the ASAI, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and the fitness check carried out by the European Commission, we are satisfied that we are on top of the issue. Of course, we read from time to time in newspapers about complaints against advertisements which have been upheld by the ASAI and the advertisements have been removed.

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