Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Déanaim comhbhrón freisin leis an gCathaoirleach, le muintir Pender, agus le muintir Uí Cheallaigh.

I listened with interest to the comments of our colleague, Senator Noone, on radio this morning when she said the Sex Offenders (Amendment) Bill 2018 should include a ban on convicted sex offenders using dating apps.I agree that it would be good if a way could be found to do this. It is a matter on which we should have a debate, but what about the person who has not yet been convicted of an offence and who poses a danger to others through online activity?

When it comes to online safety, people's right to communicate content of any kind privately must in future be subject to transparency, verification and content regulation measures in the interests of protecting others. There has been much discussion of these issues after the conviction of the murderers of Ana Kriégel, may she rest in peace, and the conviction of Patrick Nevin for rape and sexual assault. Regulating online content may make some of us safer, but it will not cure the moral malaise that is making people more unsafe generally through their or other people's online activity. We need a greater willingness to consider the risky behaviours that are exposing people to various dangers, including from criminals. For example, I was struck by the comments of the executive director of the Rape Crisis Network on "Morning Ireland" today, who talked about the Nevin case impacting on everyone's confidence in a platform like Tinder. She seemed loath to say anything undermining of Tinder but had no problem with some irrelevant referencing of the marriage and abortion referendums. There is an incoherence here. That website is itself a reflection of the fact that some people are living lonely lives and seeking intimacy with strangers in a way that is perhaps inherently dangerous. Much of this may be beyond our remit as legislators except in the way that Senator Noone proposes, but it should be part of our national conversation.

In the same vein, I was struck by an RTÉ "This Week" interview on Sunday in which some verification measures to prevent children accessing pornography were decried, partly because they might involve embarrassing adults wishing to access such content online. This was backed up by the argument that attempts to verify age would not work anyway. If one was making money out of the porn industry, one would be happy with such defeatism. I have heard the argument that it cannot work or be regulated before. I heard it when defenders of the prostitution industry wanted to decry measures to criminalise the users of persons in prostitution. They said that it would drive prostitution further underground. It is also the argument of the selfish, who do not want to see measures that would protect others from harm, including children, because they fear any incursion into their own supposed freedoms. Those arguments ultimately did not prevail in respect of prostitution, and I hope that they will not prevail in respect of other dimensions of the sex industry, where regulation now seems to be needed in order to protect very vulnerable people.