Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. This Bill is well overdue and we can all acknowledge that. It is also one of the most comprehensive legislative measures in the world when it comes to dealing with social media. Too often we come into the Seanad Chamber and say that the law is not in the same place as people are. This Bill acts as a vanguard when it comes to online safety for children and, indeed, all of us. We said the same thing when it came to the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act and now we have legislation here to which people all over the world will point and they will say that Ireland is a leader when it comes to tackling the problems.

I often say that I believe children should be educated in an online world because this is the way we all socialise now. Let us be honest about it. With that comes danger, particularly around advertising. We know that we are targeted more and more than we ever were before when it comes to advertising. This Bill listens to the stakeholders. A significant amount of time was spent in pre-legislative scrutiny and this is the first Government to take the time with pre-legislative scrutiny of all of these Bills. The Bill is being welcomed by a number of organisations, which is to the credit of the Minister and the Oireachtas joint committee. Thirty-three of the recommendations were taken on board by the Department, which just goes to show the seriousness with which the Government and the Minister’s Department is taking the work of the Oireachtas committee and the stakeholders and witnesses that came before it.

We have to be honest about it and state there are two sides to the coin. There are those who will say that we need freedom of expression and those who will say that we have to regulate something that can cause danger. In the first instance, this Bill refers to liberty of expression, which is unusual in legislation, but it also looks to be flexible. The Minister has taken on board some of the concerns that organisations had and she went beyond where the legislation will go by setting up an expert group on the safety of children online. That, again, is the right thing to do.

The Bill is a massive 146 pages long. As a lawyer myself, I note every single word matters. Some 146 pages of words that have been well thought through and comprehensive but are flexible enough to be able to adjust the situation that we all find ourselves in is exactly what we need at this point.

There is always room for improvement. I would love to see more on infant formula, which was one of the suggestions in the Oireachtas joint committee and something about which I feel very passionately, as does the Minister. On thinking back, I have been a breastfeeding advocate and set up breastfeeding support groups with friends in the past. The landscape has changed and it is not just what we see on the breaks as we watch television programmes. It is now at 3 a.m., when we are desperate and have a child who will not sleep and we are searching online and looking for something for mastitis or something to make the child fall asleep. That is when we are being assaulted by online advertising saying that it has the answer and it is something that can be sold to us. That is where the danger lies for all of us. Therefore, we have to be agile enough. Setting up expert groups on the back of this legislation is agile enough but I would love to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that and what we can do. We do not know all of the answers now, even with this legislation.