Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Tánaiste's words. I agree with him that much work has been done by school communities and different organisations through different programmes and that many of our schools are far more inclusive. However, that sickening attack many of us saw or heard about in Navan is a reminder to all of us that there is far more work still to be done. That trend that is happening, which we see not only on our island but on our neighbouring island, of orchestrated attacks for social media content is very real.

Many of these social media operators are headquartered here. If I was the parent of that young child, I do not know how I would be able to deal with not being able to go on social media without seeing my son being attacked in that vicious way. It is not acceptable that these companies are allowing that content still to be on that platform today.

I ask the Tánaiste to send a clear message to the social media operators that are headquartered in this State that they should be removing that content. They should not have to wait for our online commission to get up and running with the codes. They should do the decent thing to make sure, as we all need to do much more, our children are protected from further trauma in the aftermath of an attack like this.

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