Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Nash, to the House and I compliment Senator Higgins on doing something about this problem. It is very easy for us to sit back, let things happen and do nothing about them, but Senator Higgins has experienced this problem. She knows what it is like to suffer at the hands of bullies, and she decided to do something about it. I compliment her for getting off her rear end and doing something about it. We can all talk about the problem, but doing something about it is different.

In the past, if we were bullied in school, and many of us were bullied in school about our looks, our weight, being stupid or God knows what, we were able to go home to mum and dad and leave that trouble outside the door, but we can no longer do that. It follows us into the house, our bedroom and into our heads, and it is very difficult to stop it. I was one of those who got a lot of abuse following budget announcements. I am sure those on the Government side have been subjected to much more in the line of bullying in recent years. If people do not agree with the budget, they let us know but we signed up for politics and we have to stand over what we say or do in this House. However, vindictive, malicious comments are another matter. We should have a decent debate, and I have no problem debating the issues with anyone. The person put his name on the texts I was getting and even though they were not nice, at least I knew who was sending them.

I have been working on the problem of bullying in a different way, which could complement Senator Higgins' Bill. I have been drafting my own SIM registration Bill. I am doing that because I dealt with a young girl attending college who used to get phone calls, particularly at night, from someone who said they were watching her, they knew where she was and what she was doing and that they could see her all the time. The girl was terrified. She was so upset she would go home crying to her mum and dad. She was afraid of her life to go outside the door because she did not know who was calling her or where that person was. This person could have been in Northern Ireland or Donegal; she did not know. The person, however, slipped up by sending a text. When someone sends a text, his or her number is displayed, which is great. We had been to the gardaí about these calls previously but they could not do anything about it because his number was blocked. However, when she got the text with his number displayed, we went straight to the gardaí, who were delighted. They got on to Vodafone, but the number was unregistered.

There are people walking around this country with unregistered SIM cards. Every land line, pay as you go and bill pay phone is registered and yet we can walk into a shop and buy a SIM card that is not registered, with which we can do what we like. We can bully, send pornography and so on because nobody can trace us. I have drafted a Bill, which I hope to introduce, that will make it mandatory to register every SIM card in this country.