Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his appropriately detailed response. It is regrettable that the speed at which the Bill is moving does not allow us to have the normal Committee and Report Stages, as we should have, where we could be refining and learning from each other’s amendments and proposals.I am pleased to hear about the information given in respect of the database at EU level. That is useful and very good. In terms of the pattern, I still have a small concern. I am dealing with the issue of the flaggers but there is a wider issue including some of the amendments which were not allowed, unfortunately, but which would have allowed us to strengthen this Bill. The Minister of State mentioned that the flaggers are simply flagging actions that are illegal. A key concerns I have is with regard to how this is done, as Senator Malcolm Byrne spoke about. There has been a concern regarding these very large platforms. For example, in responding to reports or concerns, one is somewhat at the whim of whether the platforms decide this is in their particular community use rules. Many of the physical individuals who do a lot of checking, who have responsibility for quality control and who receive reports from within platforms have lost their jobs. In the end, it comes down to people checking things. There is understaffing with regard to those who are doing the work of checking and responding to complaints and flags. I am still a little concerned at the other end. As the Minister of State stated, there is a requirement that flagged reports might get priority but there is still a potential lag in terms of a proper response. We have seen how radically the employment practices in a platform can shift the level and quality of response.

I will come back to the Minister of State's other point. Will the Minister of State respond on this because our amendment No. 6 was concerned around things such as circumnavigations? This is where it is not clear whether something is legal or illegal in the classic sense. For example, that was an amendment we were not able to bring forward, as it was ruled out of order. It was an example of the ambiguity whereby the very large online platforms and very large online search engines might be using what are known as proxy markers, such as ethnic affinity markers. They may be constrained with regard to using certain kinds of data. The legal constraint is clear around using certain kinds of personal data with regard to targeting, including targeting children. There are clear legal constraints but proxy markers are sometimes used, so if someone likes this, he or she is probably a child or if somebody likes that, he or she may be of this or that ethnicity. That becomes what is sold to advertisers or what is used. That is an example of something where there is a cloud over whether something is illegal or not. We need to be building up patterns of identifying those kinds of circumnavigations again. Will the Minister of State outline where he feels that will be captured?

That is why some of the things when I looked into trying to give Coimisiún na Meán its investigations I almost hoped we would have flaggers who would be able to flag that. If the flaggers are constrained and are flagging to the platforms things that are definitively illegal, will we still have a filter within the platforms that will stop the identification of intentional, creative, misinterpretation of the rules that we have seen in the past with the issue of proxy markers? I had lengthy notes on that issue but I will park it because I am conscious it is not an amendment but as it relates to these functions, I would appreciate it if the Minister of State could address that issue.