Lorraine Higgins (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the news yesterday that the Garda Commissioner, Nóirín O'Sullivan, speaking at the annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, said that an investigation is under way into the intimidation and harassment on social media of members of the public and gardaí. This is brilliant news for many adults and children the length and breadth of the country who have been exposed to sustained and sometimes orchestrated campaigns of abuse online. This issue has been allowed to fester because of the lack of clear legislation in this area. The Commissioner's commitment is particularly important because, in my experience, social media companies have shirked their responsibilities entirely when it comes to providing a duty of care to their users. This has been made abundantly clear to me in recent days because only last week I wrote to Twitter and Facebook as a result of the inordinate number of messages that I received from people who have been subjected to online abuse. I have asked these social media companies to confirm how many complaints they have received, the length of time it has taken them to investigate these complaints and how many of these complaints have been referred by them to An Garda Síochána. To date, they have failed, refused and-or neglected to provide me with this information. Their reluctance to acknowledge any duty of care whatsoever to their users is quite baffling. Despite the fact that they have the benefit of a favourable tax rate in this country, it is about time that they showed some corporate social responsibility and at the very least, responded to specific questions and quitted their powder puff PR spin.

I commend the Garda Commissioner on taking action in attempting to bring some degree of decency back to online discourse. I urge her to ensure that there is cross-Border co-operation between the policing forces to ensure that people can be brought to task for the kind of vile vitriolic messages that are being posted online and that these people face penalties and sanctions.

I ask the Leader to set aside time to discuss and debate this matter with the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.