Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do agree. We made a Government decision on 5 November this year to do exactly as suggested, that is, to prepare legislation to require political advertising online to be transparent. However, our current estimate is that we will have the general scheme for quarter 2 of 2020. Whether that will be in advance of the election is undetermined. That is as quickly as the Department believes it can draft the legislation. We will do it as soon as we possibly can.

Separate to that, the Minister for Justice and Equality has launched a public consultation on the issue of hate speech. We have legislation already, the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, but everyone acknowledges it is quite old and needs to be updated to reflect modern times. Therefore, there are separate issues: political advertising, which needs to be properly regulated, and hate speech. The Minister for Justice and Equality is working on the latter, in particular, with a view to updating the legislation and making it much stronger.

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