Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Thanks are due to the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media for their extensive work on the pre-legislative scrutiny report on the general scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill. This included 33 recommendations, which shows how complex and important this legislation is. One of those recommendations was that an individual complaints mechanism for harmful online content be provided. This is a matter I have been considering closely for some time.

The issue of providing for avenues of redress in terms of individual pieces of content in the online world is complex. The approach in the development of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill to date has been to provide the online safety commissioner with the power to require that regulated online services have effective complaints mechanisms in place with full powers of audit and investigation provided to the commissioner in that respect. The Bill also provides for a super-complaints mechanism whereby nominated bodies may notify the commissioner of concerns regarding a designated online service's compliance with an online safety code or relating to the availability of harmful online content on a service.

I am very conscious that the introduction of an individual complaints mechanism raises a number of complex practical and legal issues, including in terms of the sheer volume of content online. I am also conscious that Ireland will be regulating a number of services on an EU-wide basis, which involves regulating on behalf of a population of 450 million, and of questions relating to due process requirements and how quickly decisions could reasonably be made by the online safety commissioner.

In light of the recommendations of the Oireachtas joint committee, I am examining how these issues can be addressed. I announced last week that I will shortly establish an expert advisory group. I hope the membership of the group will be announced in the coming days. This group will report on this matter within 90 days with recommendations as to how best to address this issue. Following the report of the group, I will consider how to give effect to any recommendations through amendments to the Bill.

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