Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, for coming to the House to take this Stage of the Bill. There are a few people I wish to thank for bringing this Bill to fruition. First, my former colleague and Senator, Lisa Chambers, who put a lot of work into this Bill. It first appeared under her and my name but she was the lead on it and it is important at this point to thank her for that work. I thank all the people who contacted me, particularly in the past three months, regarding the absolute necessity to have catfishing as an offence in its own right. We are all familiar with the anecdotes, especially when The 2 Johnnies aired their podcast, which was fascinating listening and I listened to it myself. It is time we stepped up and took this seriously.

There were several people who contacted me and I spoke to them at length. The impact of the catfishing they endured on both an emotional and financial level has been absolutely huge. One particular lady lost €250,000 during Covid, has moved jurisdictions and has been in a very difficult situation both emotionally and financially. Sometimes we think of catfishing in just the romantic sense, but a young man, Seán McNicholas, went to the trouble of sending me a study and survey he had done relating to understanding the issue of catfishing and sports participants. It is very interesting reading. He has given me permission to use his name. I am also happy to send it on to the Minister's Department. He did a lot of work and a really big survey on the impact of catfishing within the sports world, and it is quite shocking to read.

We have agreed at every level that we want to take catfishing seriously. We are very conscious, as in so many areas relating to the online world, of our young people in particular. It is important to send a strong message to society that catfishing will not be tolerated. At this time it is and anybody can go online and create a false identity for themselves. Obviously, in situations where fraud has been carried out, there is other legislation that can deal with that, but in many instances it is very difficult to find the perpetrator. In several cases where I have spoken to victims, they have gone to the trouble and expense of hiring private investigators to try to find the individuals. In some cases, they were able to find IP addresses and in others they were not. It is basically throwing more money after more money after more money.

Catfishing is used to deceive, lure and manipulate and leads to blackmail and financial exploitation. We are familiar with the horrific situation of McCartney in Newry who is now, thankfully, behind bars. He catfished young girls all around the world to the extent that one young girl in America, while only 12 years of age, took her own life and, 18 months later, her father took his own life. There is a lot of damning evidence out there and I believe we should use our powers as legislators to ensure we keep people safe in every way possible. I have discussed this with the Minister and I appreciate his support. I have also spoken to officials within the Department and we have agreed there will be a period of time where the Department will dig deep into the possibility of unintended consequences. We want to ensure we have robust legislation that will go on our Statute Book. I have agreed to this and we will continue communications with the Minister's office and the Department. I certainly look forward in the not-too-distant future to being able to bring this to Final and Report Stages here in the Seanad.

I thank the Minister once again for his support.