Joan Freeman (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My colleague, Senator McDowell, delivered a very factual argument on this topic but I propose to focus on an emotive aspect of the topic. Let us put the Government into the centre of this picture.One of the best ways of describing the Government and its attitude towards children is to look at the ad for Barnardos on the television at present. Barnardos has done a truly magnificent job on this. It pictures a woman who has just lost her child. She is pushing a pram and her little boy has suddenly gone missing. I do not know if the Minister has ever experienced this, but I have, not only as a child when I lost my mother, but also as a parent when I lost my child. One feels fear and horror when one loses a child. Barnardos is not talking about lost children but about the lost child, through not having been protected from either sexual abuse or neglect. I have said many times in this Chamber that this Government is absolutely guilty of abuse, the abuse being neglect of our children. Let us picture and think about this 13 year old child. She has just started school, and it is the most dreadful and difficult time for that child at 13 years of age. She has suddenly gone from primary to secondary school. That transition is making her grow up very quickly. She finds it very difficult and it is an anxious time for her. Between 13 and 16 years of age is the biggest transition of that child's life - in fact, any person's life. Most changes that happen in a person's lifetime happen during those three years, whether it is puberty or emotional change. There is also the sudden transition into an older world.

The other part of being 13 is that it is usually the time of the onset of self-harm. This is when a child cannot cope with emotional difficulties. As we all know, the emotional difficulties are brought on by their peers, their environment, their culture and things they cannot cope with, such as bullying, peer pressure or feeling that they are ugly, that they have no friends or that they are not a part of society. This goes hand in hand with being 13. I do not know whether the Minister has children, but if he has a child who is or was 13, would he ask that child to stand in front of a stranger and hand over his or her photographs and address and all other details about himself or herself? Does the Minister think it would be okay for that child to stand there and hand that information over to a stranger? Just because there is a screen between the child and the social media organisations and companies does not mean the child is protected. There might as well be a stranger in front of that little girl or little boy of 13 years of age, and the Minister thinks it is okay for that child to hand over that information.

One of the Minister's arguments has consisted of quoting the main organisations involved, such as the ISPCC, the Ombudsman for Children and the Children's Rights Alliance, as if they are gods, and because they are the ones who are giving us this information, we should go by that information. I am not quite sure whether the Minister realises that the Children's Rights Alliance has updated its information and its submission. It now says it is absolutely wrong to rely on the parents' consent. However, the little bit it has missed out on is that it is absolutely wrong to rely on a 13 year old to have the sense of responsibility to be able to hand over those data. I will quote something the Children's Rights Alliance has said in its updated submission.

[There is far] too much of an emphasis on parents and young people to make informed decisions in an ever changing technological environment. Consent can provide illusory control and place an excessive burden on parents.

This is what the Children's Rights Alliance is saying now. It is saying its original submission was not quite correct. It also states that "this approach takes the emphasis off the data controller, which in many cases [is] a social media platform". Not once, except last week at our Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs meeting, has this subject come up of the onus being on the companies. If the Minister honestly believes that a 13 year old child, or the parent of that child, can fight the giants of social media, he does not know what is going on in the world. My children are long past being 13 but I know I represent the majority of parents in Ireland, and actually the majority of parents in this Government who must toe the party line. I ask the Minister to re-evaluate what this Government is trying to say and to introduce not only the age of consent as 16, but also legislation to the effect that the onus of this will be on the social media platform companies rather than on innocent children.