Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader for the opportunity to speak. Today is digital Internet safety day. It is an important day in the calendar because it is a day when we bring awareness to keeping children safe online. It is unfortunate that it is a day. It should be every day that we ensure we are keeping our children safe online. The protection of minors should be a priority for the Data Protection Commission. However, section 30(6) of the Data Protection Act 2018, which would make it illegal to profile minors for the purpose of targeting them with advertising, has never been commenced. This means tech platforms à la algorithms can use minors' data such as their age, gender or sexual orientation to target ads at them. Children and vulnerable adults can be brought to the extremes easily by harmful ads. This is despite the EU General Data Protection Regulation explicitly stating that, "Processing [of data] shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies... [that] the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes". The digital age of consent in Ireland is 16. Children under 16 cannot consent to the processing of their data. Therefore, it should be illegal to target children under 16 with advertising or algorithms. I ask that the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration come before Seanad Éireann to address that issue. On the day he is here I would also like sexual exploitation to be addressed.That is widespread online today. It takes the form of children being dressed up as adults in sexually suggestive clothing and being made to pose for pictures and videos to be posted online. This practice should be seen as and considered child sexual abuse material. It should be treated as such in the law, and those creating this content should face harsh consequences.

On Internet digital safety day, therefore, I have raised with the Leader two solutions that would help protect our children online. One is the enacting of section 30(6) of the Data Protection Act. The other is to bring forward a law preventing sexual exploitation of our minors. That would go a long way towards protecting our children and ensuring we do not have targeting of algorithms where children have not given consent in respect to their data because they cannot as they are under 16 years of age.