Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. I welcome the Bill and when it is enacted, its impact will be groundbreaking. It is a long overdue development that recognises the multiple media forms that now exist in our lives. It is important to say the establishment of the new media commission and the three commissioners will be vital in forcing our regulatory system to deal with the enormous challenges posed by online activity and recognising, as many others have said, that for many people on-demand audiovisual services now overtake the main broadcast media in how they consume broadcast content.

Before I go into the detail of the Bill, it is important to acknowledge the enormous work undertaken by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media. I am not a member of that committee - I have sat in on its meetings a number of times - but I am certainly aware of the extensive number of hearings and the very detailed report and recommendations issued by it. While some of the committee's recommendations were incorporated into the Bill before us, a number of them were not. I am also conscious of the commitments to address some of the outstanding concerns, such as the report that has been commissioned into the individual complaints mechanism. There are also concerns with regard to how much detail in the Bill relates to the online safety commissioner. These are not peripheral but core issues. There is a real question about the timing of this Bill coming before the House when these fundamental issues have not yet been fully addressed. Like others, I would like these issues to be fully addressed and brought back to the House before this Bill is passed. I hope it is not rushed through this House and into the Dáil before those issues are fully resolved.

Others have spoken about the issue of the absence of the individual complaints mechanism.To me there is a real issue about the point of this Bill if it cannot facilitate meaningful and direct recourse for those affected by online safety issues. We have heard from groups like the Children’s Rights Alliance, CyberSafeKids and the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, ISPCC, all having concerns that failure to have an individual complaints mechanism will perpetuate the harm online and, in particular, will leave children and other vulnerable persons exposed and unprotected by this Bill. While I recognise that there is a provision for expert groups and NGOs to report, unless there is a direct recourse for individuals then this Bill will be failing in what it sets out to do, namely provide regulation and support to those affected by harmful online activity.

The following point is important to me. While regulation and sanction of harmful online content is the most groundbreaking element of this Bill, when I look at the detail there is also a lack of ambition in certain elements of it. Why has the Government shied away from naming non-criminal, harmful content such as advertising to children of gambling products and of high-fat, high-salt and high-sugar food products? Instead of being brave and hardwiring a Bill on advertising to children of these products, we are told that responsibility for the regulation of advertising of these products lies with their line Departments, namely the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine or the Department of Justice. There is an inconsistency at the heart of the Bill because the responsibility for online safety is rightly placed within the media commission; the online safety commissioner will be tasked with regulating content to ensure the online safety of children and adults and when it comes to some of the thorniest and most harmful online exposure, responsibility is sent back to the Departments. To be fair to the Departments they are looking after the commercial interests of food production companies and other enterprises. We can hardly expect a Department other than the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to be a neutral arbiter on these issues, whereas we could expect an online safety commissioner and the media commission to have a strong role in this. It is regrettable that outright bans are not named in this legislation.

The other big issue is the advertising of infant milk formula products. A key point that has been made by the Baby Feeding Law Group Ireland is that this Bill should seek to protect all children and not just those who are old enough to consume digital or analogue advertising. When I say all this, I recognise that there will always be demand for infant formula and mothers have a right to decide what is best for themselves and their families. This is not about stigmatising choices but it is about protecting families from marketing that is purely driven by profit considerations, not by any interest in the advancement of public health. That is why I strongly feel we should have an outright ban on the advertising of infant formula products for children up to the age of 36 months. We know Ireland has been found wanting in comprehensively implementing the World Health Organization international code of marketing breastmilk substitutes and that we have had an ambivalent attitude towards the marketing of breast milk, marketing online and within some Irish hospitals. There is an opportunity to introduce a ban within the legislation, not to commit to something that may be looked at down the road. We also need to introduce a ban on the profiling or tracking of babies or children’s data and anybody who has been pregnant over the last decade will tell you that if you become pregnant after a while your search history will start to throw up all sorts of advertising online.

The online world is only a safer place because of the incredible work of content moderators on various platforms. Unfortunately we do not have any regulation of their work in this Bill. While it could be argued that regulation of their work could be dealt with within health and safety legislation, the performance of content moderators is vital in the self-regulation of platforms in this country. If we do not ensure that we have proper supports in place for self-regulation, that places an enormous pressure on the regulatory infrastructure, namely the media commission. There is a serious need to look at how this Bill relates to content moderators.

I mention the overdue publication of the report of the Future of Media Commission.. There is a growing frustration that we have not seen that. In my role as Labour Party spokesperson on media I talk to local and national media and we need to see that vision from Government. I urge the Minister to press on with that publication.