Pádraig Ó Céidigh (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment to come to the House to explain the plans and strategies he and his Department have regarding social media and Internet-related problems. I noted that there was a good debate on this issue at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs this morning. There are a few reasons why I am seeking a debate. I will provide some facts.

Figures for this year show that 89% of households are connected to the Internet. There are 3.4 million smartphones in Ireland. A total of 93% of those aged between 16 and 29 years of age use social networks while 60% of those aged between nine and 15 years of age use smart phones. There are significant problems with cyberbullying. We must make decisions and attack that. The large multinationals operating in our country are more than welcome but we need to create some disciplinary process because this is a huge issue. There is a major problem when people want to report cyberbullying. There is no proper monitoring. Cyberbullying gives rise to psychological intimidation, stress and anxiety and those who engage in it use fake names. The Harvard Business School conducted a study and found that there is a huge level of increased anxiety among young people purely because they are on social media. There is an onus on us to look after our people in every way we can, particularly in the context of new technologies. Those technologies come with pluses and significant minuses. We have a strong legal system that I support and that is based on the principle of someone being innocent until proven guilty. Right now on social media, someone is guilty, end of story.

In my youth, a journalist was somebody who wrote for a newspaper or appeared on RTÉ or other national media. Now everybody in the country is a journalist. That is very dangerous. I ask everybody in this House to come together and say that we need to change this for the betterment of our country and the integrity of connectivity going forward. Let us be leaders, as we have been in the past, in developing and implementing a proper strategy. This morning, I bought two advertisements for €20. I now have an advertisement relating to Senator Boyhan so that when someone carries out a Google search in respect of him - it is not yet true but it will be true in the next couple of hours - my name will come up. I have also decided to buy an advertisement under the name "Leo Varadkar" so that my name will come up. The reason why I am saying this so strongly and why I spent €20 on it is because in the past six months I was contacted by 14 companies that informed me they had to buy their names back from Google. That is one of the ways Google makes its money. I contacted Google and asked what I could do about this. I was informed that all someone can do is outbid the other person get their name or that of their company back. I am pleading with everybody here to help resolve this problem.