Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As regards amendment No. 102, it is important to acknowledge that there is a very real issue with young children accessing online services that were not designed with them in mind. It is an issue that I am particularly aware of, both as a parent of young children and as the chair of the National Advisory Council for Online Safety, which recently released a comprehensive report on children's online safety. In May, the European Commission launched a new European strategy for a Better Internet for Kids. This strategy is built upon three pillars focused on child protection in the online environment, digital empowerment and active participation. Under the child protection pillar, there is a strong focus on providing age-appropriate online experiences, including through age verification and age-appropriate design. In this regard, the commission commits to facilitating a comprehensive code of conduct on age-appropriate design by 2024 using the provisions of the Digital Services Act, which provides that such codes of conduct may be co-regulatory instruments. The commission has indicated that the code could provide for age verification for accessing certain online content.

In order to facilitate age verification, the commission has committed to work with member states and EU standardisation to strengthen effective age-verification methods. I will be asking an coimisiún to look at this issue as a priority, particularly through engaging on the Better Internet for Kids strategy, to identify potential options and solutions to dealing with this complex issue.

As regards amendment No. 128, as I said on Committee Stage, the content limitation notice provisions in the Bill apply to harmful online content and not age-inappropriate online content so as to limit the potential involvement of the an coimisiún in matters regarding individual pieces of content to only that content which is expressly deemed harmful under the Bill. I cannot accept either of the amendments.