Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairperson.

Amendment No. 1 states, "The Commission may, by order, prescribe such period as it considers appropriate to be an election campaign ...". The question needs to be asked as to whether there should be a statutory period prescribed in law for the length of time which will constitute an electoral period. In addition, how will this impact on the ability of third parties to run advertisements during election periods which are political but are not associated with a referendum or an election taking place?

On the next amendment, which inserts "expertise in information and communications technologies and the application of such technologies in the context of elections and referendums", my concern is the application of expertise after the fact, that is, that the expertise on the commission will not compensate for an inability to enforce unworkable legislation. The Minister of State might comment on that.

Amendment No. 27 proposes to insert "to protect the integrity of elections and referendums against the ... disinformation ...", is a highly important one. A number of these amendments were called for during the pre-legislative stage but no work has been done to discuss what is meant by "misinformation" and "disinformation". My office and perhaps some others have been inundated since they saw these amendments regarding the concerns. Not to be too sympathetic with platforms, I must agree with some of their points in relation to these amendments. The definitions present a fait accompliin terms of, for example, how the electoral commission will interact with the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2022. I would be grateful if the Minister of State could tell us how the electoral commission will interact with the media commission. Is there a danger that these functions will somewhat overlap?

I will look at some of the concerns in relation to the misinformation amendments. There seems to be concern that there has been a lack of consultation with stakeholders, including civil society, since these amendments were published. Given the rushed timeline, there appears to have been no consultation with civil society organisations on these proposals since they were published. There certainly has been no consultation with industry, despite repeated calls from, for example, Technology Ireland.

Concerns have been expressed about this Bill will overlap with other Irish laws, in particular, the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2022. There is a clear lack of alignment with planned and existing EU initiatives. For example, the European Commission has recently announced the agreement of a revised code of practice on disinformation which has, I believe, 34 signatories. The legislation is completely out of alignment with that code. The European Commission intends to bring forward an EU-wide regulation on political advertising and this legislation clearly clashes with the European Union's intention to have a harmonised set of rules across the EU for political advertising and disinformation.

There are also some concerns being raised in relation to the clarity of the definitions. I believe the definitions to be ambiguous in places and arbitrary in others, making it difficult to understand how the electoral commission will be able to balance the rights of all individuals involved in any decision it makes.

There is a lack of impact assessment. There appears to be no impact assessment on how the provisions will impact fundamental rights during electoral periods, no assessment on the volume of material and the electoral commission will be required to review the threshold for platforms to report content to the electoral commission. Given criminal sanctions are involved, platforms will understandably err on the side of caution and report every report they receive to the electoral commission. All political parties will seek advantage by reporting every other political party's content as potential misinformation. The electoral commission will be inundated with reports.

No provision has been made for the enormous team that the electoral commission would require to have on standby for electoral periods to assess each of the reports that it receives. If the electoral commission is not sufficiently resourced, there will be severe issues of bias in how it selects and prioritises the content it chooses to review, and larger parties and political organisations will be able to capitalise on the system to the cost of smaller groups, minorities and Independents. It appears that the new provisions, especially in relation to electoral disinformation, have been drafted without due regard to the recently agreed digital services Act or the renewed EU code of practice on disinformation.

The amendments relating to electoral disinformation are being proposed at a late stage in this legislative process with, as I stated earlier, little consideration or discussion. The proposed new provisions were drafted without consultation.Pursuant to the EU technical regulations information system, TRIS, notification procedure, the European Commission will be required to examine these proposed new provisions to ensure compatibility with EU law. Recital 9 of the Digital Services Act states:

This Regulation fully harmonises the rules applicable to intermediary services in the internal market with the objective to ensure a safe, predictable and trusted online environment, addressing the dissemination of illegal content online and the societal risks that the dissemination of disinformation or other content may generate, where fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter are effectively protected and innovation is facilitated. Accordingly, Member States should not adopt or maintain additional national requirements on the matters falling within the scope of this Regulation, unless explicitly provided for in this Regulation, since this would affect the direct and uniform application of the fully harmonised rules applicable to providers of intermediary services in accordance with the objectives of this Regulation.

There is a lot of information there. I hope the Minister of State is in a position to respond on those questions and concerns. I thank him for his time.