Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief in seconding the amendments. We have debated back and forth and the key point we highlighted is that this already has been identified, recognised and accepted to be a problem. It was recognised as a problem most recently even by the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, in its engagement with the committee on finance and public expenditure on other legislation. It highlighted this issue as an area of ambiguity and one that needed clarification.

There was a problem with seeking to try to deal with this solely through the electoral commission anyway. The problem is that political purposes is currently constituted much wider than the electoral processes. Dealing with it in an electoral context was not the issue, the problem is that it is widely interpreted way beyond the electoral space. However, the Government had argued that it would deal with it as part of the electoral commission legislation, but then it did not deal with it.

When something has been highlighted as causing concern and ambiguity and being a problem, it is bad practice that we are putting that very wide definition again into another legislative measure which will have a very wide reach far outside the electoral space. While the Minister was very specific about not wanting to cut across the area of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in this regard, that Minister has not shown the same concern because the Electoral Reform Bill includes definitions relating to algorithms, recommender systems and all these other areas which we also wanted to address in this Bill. We were told it had to wait for the digital services directive, yet the Electoral Reform Bill went ahead and ploughed right into that area and did not wait for or even reference seeking to try and engage with this legislation.

The online safety media regulation, which ultimately is not responsible for regulating elections but responsible for regulating online content, is allowing that excessively broad definition to continue to apply and is creating a hostage to fortune. The interpretation of "political purposes", and it arises in many Acts, including the previous broadcasting legislation, has caused trouble and ambiguity in those areas. I still remember when I worked with Trócaire and when an advertisement saying that girls across the world experience discrimination or additional obstacles was deemed to be too much of a political purpose to be allowed to be broadcast. It was just a straightforward statement of fact, but arguably it had the political purpose of promoting gender equality. That is how widely it has been interpreted in the past and that is why it is a problem specifically in the Minister's area in terms of media regulation.