Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him for doing the House the courtesy of making a statement on recent events. Without engaging in wrong practice in respect of the event, all I can say, as Senators Leyden and Boyhan have said, is that as a member of the Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment and having had the privilege of working with the Minister in both Houses of the Oireachtas over a number of years, I know him to be a man of absolute integrity who engages in absolute due process in all his dealings and who is above reproach. If an error was ever made it would be in methodology, it would never be an error in due process. The Minister is a great colleague and an excellent, proactive Minister. I believe that is the view across the House and in many ways it is reflected in the response in this debate.It is interesting that the Minister on this occasion was exhausting all investigative procedure and was allowing complete due process to take place. He could have acted differently were he to have had a vested interest. Were he to have had a vested interest, he could have operated in a different way at the outset. He is a man of absolute probity and personal decency and somebody I know very well on a number of fronts and it is a privilege to work on the committee with him.

I turn to the events of today and the matters under discussion. It is important we have a strongly resourced, independent national broadcasting service. That is sine qua non. It is something that should not even be considered a matter for debate. It needs to be resourced and supported. Local radio is also important, and Senator Leyden talked about this. In my area Northern Sound is extraordinarily important to a lot of people and it is their source of news and information. I am delighted that the Minister has decided to bring forward legislation to remove the hourly limit on advertising. That will be helpful. I welcome that there will be new funding for journalists working in local radio stations. It is important and it would be negligent of me to represent the people I represent and not cite the interest they have in this question and in having a strong local radio service.

I am happy to know that by June the Taoiseach has committed to an action plan on online safety and that the reports will be looked at. Deputy Lawless's Bill, which he talked about at the committee the other day, is a very helpful input, albeit needing the amendments cited by the Minister.

I refer to cyberbullying, abuse, misinformation, wrong information and, in some instances, pornography, etc., becoming available to young people. Action is needed and the Minister is committed to this action, but as a parent, teacher and public representative, I can only stress the horror that is involved there, the real fear parents have around this and the need to deal with it.

I refer to recent events in relation to Facebook and social media. It must be recognised that the basic premise on which social media operates is how they make their money. The commercial premise on which they operate is to have names - two billion persons in the case of Facebook - who are the recipients of potential advertising. That is fair enough and that is how it works. It cannot be otherwise and we support that. We recognise our domestic interest in the success of Facebook, what it means to Dublin and to Ireland.

Having said that, I refer to a situation where the private information of individuals can be harvested by sinister groupings and used to manipulate democracy, thwart the natural electoral processes and damage how elections function. I know this is more prevalent in America and that, through the European Commission, there are rules which make it more difficult here. However, at the same time, one has to state in this House that we have to be sure. I appeal to the Minister to look at this in the context of the upcoming referendum. We want to be sure that nothing untoward happens in the referendum on the eighth amendment and in the next general election and that that kind of information could not be manipulated, or voters exploited in this fashion. That is extraordinarily important.

I mention something of which I and former and current Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas have been victims, namely, that is the use of fake accounts on social media to disseminate falsehoods, to play on a vulnerable audience and to present untruths. Thankfully, in my case I had the mental resources and strength to cope with it. That was not always the case for colleagues and it can be very difficult. I know of many colleagues who have suffered a lot emotionally and personally because of this kind of online activity. I refer to the elimination of fake accounts and rigorous processes being adopted by the social media outlets to eliminate fake accounts, recognise them and deal with them. If there is one thing about I feel very strongly and which the Minister might take from my contribution to today's debate, it would be that. That is extraordinarily serious, as is the harvesting of information, without people's willingness to provide it, to thwart democracy and to target advertising towards vulnerable people in a way they do not understand and to focus advertisements on their emotional conditions. For people who are naturally fearful, there is a set of political advertising creating a fear in them and telling them untruths or manipulated truth based on that. It is important we have control of our social media and that people know their private data cannot be used. In some instances, it was even being used years after they had left the social media sites. That should not happen.

I am heartened the Minister recognises, and once again commits himself to, the critical importance of an independent national news service and the augmenting and supporting of RTÉ and TG4 to provide that and that he recognises the importance of local radio and the new services they provide to the people I represent and to people right across the country.

I also welcome the fact cyberbullying is recognised as a problem to be dealt with head on and that social media outlets would be controlled in a way that the data presented by people, and given in good faith, cannot be wrongly used.