Joan Freeman (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and welcome his comments and concerns. I truly want to work really hard with him on this, on making the amendments and changes required, and I do understand there is a lot of work involved. The problem I have is that things are quite slow in the Oireachtas. Senator Lombard made the point that his seven year old probably knows more about the Internet than he does. A number of Senators made similar points. I would not say "probably"; I would say "absolutely". A startling fact I did not mention earlier is that 3% of children up to the age of two years have a smartphone, so this must be done very quickly. I do not mean we should rush it such that we make a bags of it. I am saying we should work on it very quickly together in order that we can pass it through the Seanad and then on to the Dáil. When I talk about the speed required, what I am saying is that every day, every month, every year, our children get to know things far more quickly and have far more access than we can ever imagine. One Senator spoke about parental control, which sounds absolutely reasonable. As we heard from Senator Lombard, however, most parents have no idea what their children are looking at. There is a cartoon I am sure the Minister of State has heard of called "Peppa Pig". I have heard of it recently because I have four grandchildren. There are videos online of a bad Peppa Pig who kills not only his family but also her three best friends. We are exposing our children to the utmost horrors that neither the Minister of State nor I would ever have dreamt of.

I thank the Minister of State again for not opposing Second Stage. I thank the Senators who are wonderfully supportive of the Bill. Again, I know we have a lot of work to do. I thank in particular Senators Ó Céidigh, Boyhan and McDowell for putting their names to the Bill. I would very much like if the Minister of State and I could meet his team in January to look at all the areas of the Bill he mentioned as needing to be amended and added to. Let us not drag this out. Let us really work hard on it. God knows how long this Government will last, but let us be able to look back and say that at least we tried to do something very positive for our children. We must do something now.