Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)

Today a meeting of representatives of the Internet industry, backed by the European Commission, is taking place to discuss how children can be kept safe online. It is taking place on foot of research carried out by the EC Safer Internet programme led by the London School of Economics. The document is entitled, Towards a better internet for children. It does not consider how we can stop the spread, virally, of information on items such as Project X Cavan. Rather, it considers what is happening on the Internet and the conclusions and statistics are shocking. One in five children has seen potentially dangerous content online such as that carried on pro-anorexia websites or on suicide techniques. Some 7% of Irish children have seen naked images or videos, 6% have seen sex online, 4% have seen information on how to commit suicide and 30% had had contact on the Internet with someone they had never met before. I ask the Leader to arrange a discussion with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources on how we can keep children safe online. This is very important because the Internet is becoming a bigger part of our everyday lives. This is especially true of young people who are using it more and more for school and education purposes.

Will the Leader provide an update on when we can have a discussion on youth unemployment with the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation?