Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the House. As one of the cosignatories of the Bill, I thank her for not opposing it. I would have been very surprised if it had been opposed. Yes, it is imperfect, and the Minister outlined various issues with it, including legal issues, technical things and the fact that it does not mention the landmark legislation that these Houses and this Government put through, namely, the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act on Coimisiún na Meán.

My rationale for supporting the Bill, however, is the spirit of the Bill and the opportunity to speak about this in this House, to highlight it, to make sure that we put an urgency on the issue, which the Minister very clearly outlined she has done, and to highlight the fact that unsuitable content for young children is quite damaging. We absolutely must protect our children from pornography. I am a mammy. My eldest is 11. He has a curious, beautiful mind, and I have three other boys after him. They are fantastically curious, as they should be. We want to protect that innocence, develop children's curiosity in a safe way, teach them about life and teach them about sex and the normalities and the sacredness of what all of that brings to them in a safe and open way. Porn is not the way we do that.

I am also a woman, and we see what porn has done to the objectification of women. I would pull back on what Senator Mullen said about crimes and people who are not Irish coming into this country. I was very disappointed that the Senator brought that up because, looking at the statistics, unfortunately, in Ireland, the majority of people abusing and killing women are Irish men. Depravity is not limited to someone we do not know, someone who does not look like us or someone who does not speak our language, so I was disappointed that the Senator brought that up. This is a positive issue for this House to be working on and a positive issue we could unite on.

I understand our obligations under EU law as someone who has studied EU law. The Minister very clearly outlined that we do not have the control in this regard. As regards that lack of control, as a parent or just as Johnny and Mary on the street, we think, God, we do not have full control. As our commissioners in Coimisiún na Meán work on an EU level, how can we, with the Commission at EU level, work to ensure that the likes of the French law that is now contrary, as the Minister outlined, to the DSA are implemented all across Europe? How can we protect the country-of-origin principle to make sure we have a uniform legal status?

I should not be able to go onto Pornhub here on my phone and click on a video without showing my age or some identification. I do not believe my children should be able to go onto my phone or their own devices and be able to click on a video. We should be able to, in some way across European states, work together to protect against and stop this. We need and should have age verification and not just for pornography but for material related to eating disorders, racist and xenophobic material, self-harm and suicide. We saw reports on TikTok recently where young women were automatically brought down one avenue and young men were brought down another avenue. That was not even due to liking or clicking on any videos. Age appropriate content is hugely important.

I commend the spirit of this Bill and will absolutely support the Minister and our commissioners in Coimisiún na Meán to work through this process to make sure our children and young adults are safe; that everyone gets to develop their sexual norms and understand their bodies and what they can expect; to understand consent; to understand how their bodies work and what is normal, safe and real and that pornography is not real. I commend this Bill and am grateful the Minister is not opposing it even through there are a lot of technical issues. In the spirit of the Bill we can work on a cross-party basis with Coimisiún na Meán, with the Minister and make sure and make sure we are very strict on this issue and have no tolerance for it.