Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

To pick up on some of that, I do not think everything in the world of online safety needs to be attached to any sort of accreditation. Again, that is placing it in a particular framework in terms of people accessing education and training and having awareness of online digital safety. That does not bring it right down to a community level where people are not engaging in gaining accreditation or undertaking a curriculum in this stuff. They might only be involved in a local centre, an old folks' home or any of these other places into which this actually needs to go. I suggest that we come back with an amendment on Report Stage that still focuses on how that reach goes into community awareness. It would potentially remove the phrase "evaluate and approve", but still have something in there that acknowledges that the online safety piece needs to go further than educational institutions right into community settings where education is received in some very different ways. If people are worried about it affecting the accreditation space, we are very willing to look at removing those words and focusing on an amendment that still includes the community element.

By way of example, say a person spends a long time in prison and is going to be rehabilitated into the world having been let out. If he or she has spent 20 years in prison, in Loughan House or any of the open centres, he or she will have had no access to any sort of digital literacy or online safety.

There is also OnlyFans. A whole area of harm reduction needs to happen in that space. Nobody is being taught about how to keep themselves safe online if that is the world they are going to enter. There are a number of other spaces that will just not be appropriate to educational settings. Something which focuses that community element but removes the term "evaluate" would potentially be positive.