Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I support the Bill introduced by my colleague and good friend, Senator Higgins, and commend her on the work she has done on it. As alluded to by other Senators, there is clearly a need to balance rights here, but something must be done and if it were another area many of the Senators on the other side of the House would be suggesting that we legislate immediately for something like this measure.

Many of us have been subjected to abuse. As some Senators said, it is arguable at what point something becomes abuse and whether one person would find something abusive that another person would not. I can appreciate 100% where Senator Higgins is coming from on this issue. I had an incident of this myself which was quite difficult and which I reported to Twitter and the Garda, but there is very little that can be done. Clearly, more effort must be made to deal with these issues as they arise.

As politicians, we put ourselves out there. To all intents and purposes, we are public property and we are fair game. We are used to taking abuse but at some point one has to say "Stop". It is a large philosophical debate as to at what stage something becomes abusive. As Senator Conway said, there is no doubt that in recent years social media has given a voice to people who, if they met one on the street, would not look one in the eye, never mind speak to one. It gives people in their string vests in their basements the power to be abusive.

We must remember the very positive benefits of the Internet and social media and, for the most part, their use is usually positive. It is like anything else we have to legislate for regarding the negative or terrible things that might happen. As Senator Conway said, social media did not exist in his time in school and college and he and his friends found ways around it, but I welcome social media and everything it has brought other than these, hopefully, fairly rare instances of abuse. Clearly, we have to protect the rights that exist.

For what it is worth, I encourage colleagues to support this Bill and to bring it to the next Stage at which point positive suggestions for altering it can be made. I disagree with the point the previous Senator made that the Government has not been supportive of any Bill from the Opposition. Our record is better than the previous Government in the sense that some Bills initiated by the Opposition have been put through to Committee Stage. I share the Senator's view it would make a great deal of sense to allow most Bills-----