Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I thank my colleague, Senator Crowe for the opportunity to say a few words on the Bill. It is a technical Bill but it does have a number of important functions. It is critical that it is enacted by 17 February as we have discussed. This has to be seen as part of a suite of European legislation to ensure a safe, open, fair and innovative digital space throughout the European Union. The Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the forthcoming AI Act are all critical to ensure that we as citizens and consumers can play an active part in this new world.

The philosophy underpinning the European legislation and the Government's approach in this area is critical. We need to regard the current and emerging digital environment as a public space. It should not be behind walled gardens. Control of a small number of tech companies by a small number of wealthy individuals should not be able to shape the entire development of society and humanity. It is important that the European Union takes an active role in this. The Government's approach to legislation with this philosophy is critical.

It is my strong belief, and the Government should never apologise for saying this, that citizens and consumers should have the same rights, opportunities and protections online as they do offline. The legislation, even though it is technical legislation, supports these principles. I was glad that when we debated in quite a lot of detail the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act in 2022, which led to the establishment of Coimisiún na Meán, that we debated many of the issues. These included, as my colleague Senator Crowe has mentioned, how we deal with illegal content and how we ensure we have a regulatory framework that will protect the safety of individual citizens. There were some who said we should have waited until the Digital Services Act was enacted. I believe we were correct to enact the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act and establish Coimisiún na Meán. The work done in just over a year by Coimisiún na Meán deserves a lot of praise. This legislation empowers Coimisiún na Meán and the CCPC. In that regard, it is very technical legislation but tied with this - and this is really important - is an information campaign to make people aware of their rights as a result of the enactment of this new legislation. What is also critical, and the Government has been very strong on this up to now, is the enforcement mechanisms. Under the DSA, regulator are in a very strong position, where there are problems with various platforms and ISPs, to be able to tackle them and that is critical going into the future. In that context, we must ensure that regulators are properly resourced, including making sure that the levels of staff required are available. I do not want to see a situation arising similar to the situation with the Data Protection Commission, for instance, where lots of complaints or problems were notified to the commission but it did not have the necessary resources, including staff, to address them. This will require a wide range of specialists, including administrative, competition, and digital lawyers, as well as computer scientists, to support regulators in their work and it is absolutely critical that there is sufficient level of resourcing for Coimisiún na Meán and the CCPC.

As I have said on numerous occasions in this House, we need to have far more public debates on technology, how it is used and how it shapes our lives. I am on record as calling for the establishment of an Oireachtas committee on AI because the next measure in this suite of legislation, the AI Act, will be the most important legislation that the EU will enact this decade. It needs to be seen as part of the suite of measures which includes this legislation. This is technical legislation, and we need to have it enacted by the deadline of 17 February.