Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support what Senator Kyne said about timing, in particular the monitoring of online activity. We live in a 24-7 world and social media is in everybody's pockets or palms nearly every waking moment of the day. The electoral process is not one that is isolated to the 12 opening hours at a polling station. It is an ongoing iterative process every single day, so we should adopt a stop-start approach to this. We need to adopt a rolling continuous approach for the monitoring and management of online activity as it relates to our democracy and electoral system. There is nothing more precious than democracy and it is under constant attack. Therefore, it would be naive of us to think that we could set up a commission and limit its activities to specified or prescribed periods. I urge the Minister of State and the Department to consider the issue, and let us consider it before we complete this legislation.