Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday this Chamber was addressed by the President of a democracy that is under the threat of extinction. His address was attended by far more people than there are in the Chamber now. Deputy Higgins is right that this is a bit of a nerdy issue but it is also the bones and very core of our democracy.

I commend the Minister on bringing forward the Bill. The committee found that while the Bill is quite comprehensive, there are many areas we would love to continue to improve to make our democracy stronger. The question for Members will be how much we accept as being progress now and therefore the job of the electoral commission and how much we try to perfect here but delay overall delivery. It is a difficult task. I commend the Minister and I should acknowledge there are also Ministers of State in the Department. The Ministers of State, Deputies Noonan and Peter Burke, and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, have all worked on the legislation. I very much appreciate the work that has been done.

I am a spokesperson on electoral reform and a member of the committee. I have had extensive opportunity to debate this. Rather than repeating its merits, which have been well flagged, I will put on the record some of the amendments I would love to see the Government bring forward. I welcome the preregistration of those aged under 18. This is very important, as is the establishment of an electoral commission, for which we have been waiting almost 30 years. I am particularly concerned about online political advertising. For the first time the Bill regulates, and in some sense gives tacit support or approval to, the process of online political advertising. Until now this has been unregulated. It will be regulated during the period of an election campaign but not outside of this. The view of the committee was that this is a fairly toothless and useless process. All of the work in building up audiences and engagement is done well in advance of an electoral period.

We have heard many concerns from social media companies. In some sense they said they wanted to operate within a European framework. I understand this because they want to use one model across all of their platforms but every democracy is different. Twitter does not allow online political advertising but Facebook does. In an era when we have trusted local media sources in the form of radio, newspapers and television, which provide good quality news that is fact-checked and so on, and we prohibit advertising on radio and television, we have to ask ourselves why we allow online political advertising on platforms that do not do any of these things and where we have major concerns about fact-checking and so on. Until we have comprehensive regulation of online political advertising, we should not permit it. Twitter as an organisation has said it will not engage in it. There should be a ban on online political advertising until we get this right. I do not oppose it in the longer term. It has a very positive role in terms of groups and bringing people together and enabling activists and new candidates to break through. However, at present we do not have enough knowledge about issues such as micro-targeting. I say this because so much of our democracy is transparent. If I put up a poster that says my priority will be young people, then older people might rightly say that if I am looking after young people they must not be my priority and they will make a calculation. Our facilitation of online political advertising allows, with very little transparency, candidates or political parties to say different things to different groups of people without the same transparency that we see in a poster or a newspaper advertisement. Politicians can tell young people they are the priority as well as telling older people they are the priority. We know everyone cannot be a priority. In a way, online political advertising is not regulated. We do not have in-depth knowledge of how algorithms and micro-targeting work to allow us to permit the activity when we do not permit it on radio or television. It is a valid argument and something the Minister should reflect on.

There are many other areas I wish to speak about. I would love to see takedown notices for things that are untrue. I would like to see a much broader code of practice for social media companies. We know that by the time something untrue that has been published is removed, it already has had an impact. The electoral commission needs to carry out continuous research and have expertise in this area. I will say no more about online political advertising but on Committee Stage we need to do a lot more. In some ways what is in the Bill facilitates what is wrong with the system rather than in any way eliminating it.

Another area I want to discuss is fundraising, donations and parties' interests. I would prefer to see a consolidated set of accounts for political parties, including those candidates who run for them. There is far too little transparency. There is nothing in here with regard to cryptocurrencies. What about donations made in cryptocurrencies? This will be more and more prevalent as we go on. This morning we have seen Facebook state it wants to develop its own currency. What happens when we mix donations made on Facebook with advertisements on Facebook and the custom audiences that are being created? There is a lot of work to be done on this. Cryptocurrency donations are something we need to think about, even though they do not seem so immediate.

We need to look at the identification of sources of funding for the purchase of properties. Properties give parties a reach and access to communities. We should know how these properties are purchased. We should know where the funds come from, as they provide an electoral advantage. If a company provides an office to a politician he or she must declare it in the electoral returns.

We do not permit foreign donations in this country. We do not permit legal corporate donations above €100. However, we know that because there are two jurisdictions on the island, regrettably, parties must operate within two systems where corporate donations are allowed in one and not allowed in the other. This is very tricky. If we want to protect the very important ban on illegal corporate donations above €100, we have to better regulate and strengthen control of foreign donations. It is farcical that if parties operate in two jurisdictions they may benefit from it. I agree with Deputy Jim O'Callaghan that this is not about any one party. In the Oireachtas we should always design things for any party that might run.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, has raised concerns about regulation. Deputy Lawless said the same system should apply whether a party is big or small and I agree. The ICCL is raising the issue of access to funding. It is not just regulation but access to funding. By virtue of the funding being deemed to be for political purposes, the ICCL is prevented from accessing it. This is not a simple argument because one person's advocacy is another person's political campaigning. While people might be very well meaning in saying they want to support the legislation, they themselves have said they know it could be used by people who oppose what they believe are human rights. It is something we need to be very careful of but I would like to see the Minister consider it on Committee Stage.

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