Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is an important Bill. I am not certain it will fulfil the needs of the day, or even those of future or past days. The fact of the matter remains that digital communication and all that goes with it is a huge boon to society, to business, to social cohesion and to bringing news to the multitudes.

It also can be turned into a lethal weapon. Unfortunately, that has shown its face already in many facets internationally, for example in elections. Various situations have presented whereby a person can feed misinformation, false information or sheer pure hatred into the system before walking away from it anonymously and waiting for the result. That has already happened, as we know. It has happened in this country and has happened throughout the world. It has been facilitated by governments for malicious and seditious purposes. It still goes on.

I remember speaking in this House when digitalisation became a reality. That is not an indication of how long I have been in this House but of the fact that it came about when a number of Members were in this House. I remember saying how fortunate it was for businesses and governments to have such a ready means of communication at their hands. For business and industry, instead of having to wait two or three weeks sometimes for a reply, they had a reply within two or three minutes or even less than that. Then I thought about what happened in Rwanda, where a particular merchant of hatred seized a radio station and used the position he was in to pump out hatred against selected people. It resulted in a backlash and 500,000 people were beheaded. It was an appalling testimony to making hatred readily available and to the vehicles which created the opportunity for hatred to be transmitted.

I remember speaking when Salman Rushdie made his famous TheSatanic Versescitation. I remember being critical of it. I was told by many people that I should not do so because the author was speaking freely and there is a public right to expression. Of course that was not the case. This book was targeted at a religion. Some people are very sensitive to religion. We should know that in this country, given that we fought wars for hundreds of years here on the basis of religion. The fact of the matter is that it did bring a backlash and he subsequently apologised for it. He said at the time that he only made £5 million on the basis of it. I have my doubts about that.

Deputy Boyd Barrett mentioned the wealthy people who operate these digital platforms. They do not have to be wealthy all of the time; others have been able to do it too. I agree that we have to find some ways or means of ensuring that misinformation, disinformation and very aggressive hatred is not pumped out into the system unimpeded. It is not good for society. It will have its downside very quickly. How do we do that? I think the technology is advanced enough to be able to say that what you propose to put up on the system is repugnant to the constitution which governs digital communications. I believe the legislation is there for that purpose. Otherwise we will arrive at a situation which we are already in, where virtually anything goes. The more outrageous it is, the more likely it is to get coverage, be transmitted further on, be added to, and be enjoyed in a perverted way by some. The quality and level of the content has got to be regulated in some way by some responsible international or national authority. There needs to be some control over what one can say. One cannot walk into a room full of people, insult everybody and threaten them, impinge upon their lifestyle and thinking and influence them to an extent that is above and beyond anything we have ever heard before, and then walk away from that with impunity. That brings society down to its knees.

We had revolutions in the past. The French will always give great credit to their own revolution and the Russians likewise. The French will claim that their revolution was different. I had occasion once to tell a Frenchman that there were certain similarities. They murdered the royal family in both cases and they then set off on a tangent of legalised murder and destruction, which was no better or worse than what went before. Where do we find ourselves going in the heel of the hunt?

Back again we come to it. To my mind, it comes back to exercising some kind of control. I was listening to a radio programme on national radio recently. I spoke about it in the House at the time. A person expressed a wish that they wanted to hate people and that they wanted to tell people how much they hated them. What a crazy situation. What good does that do to society? It may well do something good for the people or the person who is promoting that idea but it does not do anything for society, for peaceful coexistence or for respect. We live in a world, unfortunately, where there is an increasing lack of respect for anybody else. We have to balance this with the right to ensure every person has the right to express their views, provided it does not bring about a retaliation in such a way that the whole thing gets out of control. Maybe we need to do that sometimes in this House also, a Cheann Comhairle.

I am sorry for going on as I have. I assure the Ceann Comhairle that I could go on for a great deal longer on this subject.

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