Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the work the Minister has done in this area. I welcome his comments about enforcing age verification measures online. I approach this issue from two perspectives - first as a criminal lawyer and second as a parent. Online safety issues are most pertinent and most dangerous when it comes to the protection of our children. Over the past year, I have been involved in a number of talks by Eoghan Cleary, vice principal of a school in Wicklow, who has expertise in the exposure of our young people online to hardcore pornography or child sexual abuse material, hardcore and extreme opinions and all kinds of other abuse material. He has given talks to parents in schools across Dublin and Wicklow and in my constituency in schools such as The Harold School in Glasthule, Educate Together in Monkstown and a number of other schools I have been to, including Johnstown. Parents are shocked by what their children are exposed to when they have unfettered access to the Internet. That is really what is at the source here. I favour a ban on access to social media for under-16s and a ban on access to smartphones for under-16s. I know that can be slightly controversial, particularly with children who fall into those age categories. I am not saying they should be isolated from the Internet, which is an important tool for them, but the notion that they have unfettered access to it is a problem. That is where parents come in. Parents cannot be solely responsible for this. Social media companies and Internet providers must bear responsibility but we cannot expect them to do it on their own. There is a role for the Government to intervene and place obligations upon them. That is where my perspective as a criminal lawyer comes in. In a talk I gave in The Harold School a little over a year ago, I explained to parents what their children are potentially exposed to, whether that is sharing images or developing opinions totally at variance with reality. Parents have no idea of the serious criminal wrongdoing their children can be involved in completely unwittingly. They think something is relatively innocent but it is actually a serious criminal offence that does enormous damage to the victim in that case. It is not enough to leave parents in the lurch. Regulation is the key. We cannot rely on social media companies to regulate themselves. Coimisiún na Meán and the Government need to step in to ensure regulation is in place to protect children, our future citizens and our country as a whole.

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