Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

I am not saying that age verification cannot be used. Rather, I am telling the Minister that if it is used, it raises privacy concerns. My point is that it is not fixing the actual problem at the root because all of that nasty material remains online. We need to have recommender systems turned off by default because they are the issue. They are the things keeping our eyeballs on screens and making sure polarisation is driving clickbait and profit lines. There are fundamental ways in which these tech platforms need to be challenged that I do not see demonstrated by the Government.

We had an exchange in committee a number of months ago where the Minister mentioned that he had raised age verification with tech companies. When I asked him about this, we discussed raising the issue of platforms as publishers, for example, as a way to start examining much more stringent and clearer ways in which we can build guidelines and safety standards into the online world that mirror what we expect in the real world. That is what we are looking for in order to address these problems at the root.

See this speech in context