Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This happened slightly faster than I anticipated. We are dealing with a number of issues. This is obviously a technical Bill. We all support it since it is necessary. A number of Deputies have already spoken about heritage. We welcome that much work is done by bodies on protecting heritage sites and ensuring continuity of such but there are difficulties. It is a problem that we have with communication across the board. When I spoke on the climate change legislation I stated there was an onus on the Government and the Minister to engage with farmers and others who have a difficulty when they hear of heritage, wildlife moves or climate change. I have met the IFA and other organisations over many years and I have seen that there is a group of people who accept that the world is changing and that we all need to work together. We absolutely need communication at Government level to ensure that happens. It has been a failing across the board to date and is something that we need to deal with.

I add my voice to Deputy James O'Connor's comments on the difficulties with online services. We have to have a major showdown or conversation with the social media giants to ensure they do not publish everything, that we have controls and constraints and that people are getting the real deal and not just algorithms that provide them with nonsense on top of nonsense. That leads to danger, especially in the current pandemic.

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