Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, to the Chamber. It is always a pleasure to have her here. I welcome back Members and staff.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. Gabhaim buíochas léi as ucht teacht anseo don díospóireacht. We are all aware of the increase in sexual crime, including sexual violence, in our society. Some, but only some, of the increase is due to a greater readiness to report such crime. Due to high-profile cases, there is heightened awareness that we need to do something, yet people are afraid. Women are afraid. There is the international dimension to this, of course. The trafficking of women and children to our shores to have violence and exploitation visited on them is one thing. There is also the fact we have no idea of how much crime, especially violence against women, is due to irregular newcomers to our shores because we seem not to want to record those statistics or do careful analysis. To do that analysis would not be in any way racist. It would be the height of prudence if we really wished to dispel fears, address all crime at its source, and take the kind of steps that would properly integrate integration itself into our law and policy.

These lapses should not, however, lead us to presume that crime is an imported phenomenon. We have a deeply serious problem of homegrown sexual assault and violence which needs our attention. Citizens have a right to expect our Government to keep our streets and public spaces safe. Two weeks ago in the Dáil, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, said "The murder of Ashling Murphy continues to weigh heavily on all of our hearts" and warned "we have moved into a phase in which young people have access to violence and violent pornography at the touch of a button on their phones". To this day, we have never had a real conversation about the contribution of violent pornography, as revealed at the trial, to the tragic death and outrageous killing of Ana Kriégel. It was as if it was an embarrassment for us to discuss it. The circumstances of this innocent girl's death appalled us, yet we did nothing about a clear contributory factor, which was the access of a youth attacker to violent pornography.

Pornography is a multibillion dollar industry with a huge international dimension. Under its Digital Services Act of 2023, the EU identified very large online platforms as those with more than 45 million users within the EU. At least three of those 20 were porn sites. Pornography is a big business, said to be worth $13 billion in the United States and $100 billion worldwide. That big business has much to lose through any kind of regulation. It is a business which thrives on addictive tendencies within the human person. It is a business which realises that, just as with the gambling and tobacco industries, it can be ever more successful by engaging people when they are young. Whatever impact it has on the human brain, that impact appears to be long-lasting and life-changing where young people are involved.

Typically, it is men who are users, although the porn industry has no intention of allowing its market to be constrained by sex or gender. Studies show that men who use pornography have poorer well-being than non-users. They report being less satisfied with their lives, having more depressive symptoms and poorer self-image. Men and women who use pornography have higher levels of aggression and are more likely to cope with stress by using negative strategies such as drinking alcohol or drug-taking or simply opting out. The many destructive messages of pornography eke their way into society to the detriment of all.

People who view pornography find themselves seeking out more and more extreme kinds. When children view pornography that shows abusive and misogynistic acts, they come to view such behaviour as normal and acceptable. The evidence shows that the psychological and neurobiological aspects of addictive disorders also happen with pornography use. Brain science shows that people addicted to pornography have their maps for normal sexuality rewired and reinforced by pornography to prefer more explicit, graphic images to maintain arousal.

According to Goodson et al. in 2020, with increasingly high use of porn, it becomes more likely that men will be likely to rape, commit sexual assault, be sexually entitled and have hostility towards women. I expect no argument here today that pornography does any kind of good to society and certainly no argument that it does any kind of good for children. We need to realise that not only is the involvement of children in the making of pornography child abuse, but pushing pornography at children or failing, in the drive to make money from the exploitation of human beings, to protect children from exposure to it is a form of child abuse. In the face of the porn industry lobby, though, everyone talks sweet words about protecting children, but very few wish to tackle it head on.

I have said in this House before with regard to other policy areas that we often talk the talk about child protection, but the unwritten yet ever-present caveat seems to be that adults must have their desires satisfied first. Our tolerance of the porn industry pushing its material at children so that adults are in no way impeded from consuming adult content is a classic example of that.

The statistics on the extent of the exposure of children to pornography are frightening. In Great Britain, the average age at which children first saw it was 13 while 38% of 16- to 21-year-olds reported that they had accidentally come across it online. Many more seek it out - 58% of boys and 42% of girls.

In the face of this ongoing pornography threat, I was taken aback by reading the new Coimisiún na Meán media service code, which is out for consultation. The purpose of this code and rules is to ensure that providers of audiovisual on-demand media services that are under the jurisdiction of the State comply with the requirements of the latest EU audiovisual media services directive. Whereas Coimisiún na Meán's draft code is extremely prescriptive with regard to alcohol, cigarettes and tobacco products, often using the term "shall not provide services harmful to children", it blinks when it comes to protecting children from pornography. On this, it says "media service providers of on-demand shall take appropriate measures to ensure that programmes containing content which may impair the physical, mental or moral development of children", going on to list content consisting of pornography. It talks only of appropriate measures, which, surprisingly, do not include mandated that robust age verification procedures be used. When the code and rules come to spelling out the rules there, they give too much leeway to porn providers. The code says that "appropriate measures for the purpose of Section 10.3 shall be proportionate to the potential harm of the programme for children." It says that "without prejudice to the generality of Sections 10.3 and 10.4, the most harmful content, namely gratuitous violence and pornography, shall be subject to the strictest measures, such as parental controls, age assurance tools or other technical measures that achieve an equivalent outcome". Again, this is the inclusion as an option rather than maintaining it as an essential of strict age verification. The code does not mandate age verification tools. It could have said that media services providers shall not provide audiovisual communications containing pornography that can be accessed by children just as it is prescriptive about any discrimination, tobacco or alcohol by contrast.

We want Coimisiún na Meán to be absolutely prescriptive and to insist on a gold standard for age verification. This must involve the uploading of documentation and accompanying photographs and selfies, etc., of a kind that frequently occur when people access State and other services such as bank accounts. If we do not do this, we will find ourselves continually played by the commercial interests in porn. If website or media service providers want to augment this verification with biometric checks, that is fine but that is less accurate, less reliable and more easily gamed by commercial interests - certainly when dealing with young people aged 15 to 18 years.

Coimisiún na Meán also has its online safety code awaiting European Commission approval that will apply specific rules to video-sharing platform services, VSPS. The code only applies to ten named online services that have been designated by Coimisiún na Meánin accordance with the Act as VSPS under the jurisdiction of this State having their EU headquarters in Ireland. That is the first thing - the limitation of the code to those services. If ever there was a need for law with extraterritorial effect, it is law that criminalises those who make porn available without age verification to ensure that children are protected. The online safety code ducks when it comes to a gold standard of documentation as a means of age verification. In speaking of age verification, it includes accepting effective age assurance measures where an age assurance measure means estimating or verifying a user's age. While acknowledging, as the code does in fairness, that self-declaration is not an effective measure of age verification, as we would all know, it is too ready to allow dodgy age assurance measures belonging to a pornography provider that may not distinguish between a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old. Of course, all of this is what the porn industry wants but it is not what parents want. I refer the Minister to recent surveys by Women's Aid that show clearly that the vast majority of people believe that porn is a problem and that it is must be dealt with. There is widespread support for the measures that need to be implemented.

I thank my fellow Independents and Senators McGreehan, Wilson and Davitt for co-sponsoring this Bill and those others here who may support it today. This Bill weaves a path through EU legislation - the Digital Services Act, the e-commerce directive and the audiovisual media services directive. Like slaloming between obstacles on an alpine ski course, I have sought to augment the directives, bearing in mind their repeated aspirations to protect children. I have sought to produce simple legislation with teeth that should, I hope, have broad appeal. After all these years of talking about protecting children online, we have done little or nothing to help parents in that task and history will not look kindly on our neglect. We need to act now.

This legislation essentially criminalises the provision of pornography should the provider not have robust age verification measures in place. Undoubtedly it will not solve all problems. The few will always find workarounds to seek out porn but by placing the onus on the purveyors and those providers who facilitate and profit from it, we will protect the vast majority of young people from it. A pub selling alcohol to those under 18 is liable to lose its licence. The publican must take adequate measures to ensure the customer is of age to consume. This simple and clear legislation seeks to penalise careless purveyors of dangerous material so it establishes an obligation on Internet service providers and app store services to ensure that persons under 18 shall not be able to access pornographic material. It requires website controllers putting up such material to make users go through an age verification process. It provides for the Minister to prescribe a list or class of documents that can be acceptable for that purpose. It allows the outsourcing of age verification to relevant third parties, which the Minister can approve for that purpose. It makes clear that the website controller and app store providers remain liable for any failure to apply the measure and it allows a legal defence for providers where it can be proven that another person facilitated the circumventing of the age verification process. It requires secure storage of any age verification data submitted for a period of five years and ensures that such data may only be accessed where needed for legal proceedings.

The Bill does not address the issue of pornography use among those aged over 18. That is a different issue that in a free society requires a different response. The Bill does not impinge on the wider use of pornography. To address that requires separate action, which should be a matter for another day.

I would like to see this Bill fast-tracked and passed before the next election. I would like to see political parties to show their commitment to protecting young people and to show that they are serious about reducing violent sexual crime in society. At a minimum, should this Bill not pass before the election, I would like to see all major parties, and indeed minor parties, adopt its provisions as part of their proposed political manifestos should they present themselves to the electorate in the near future.

I commend the good work of Coimisiún na Meán, although as I have made clear today, it needs to be more toothsome or perhaps toothful in its approach. It is, of course, limited by its remit with regard to the platforms that have their headquarters based in Ireland. In addition to all that, we need primary legislation. We need criminal law. Coimisiún na Meán can levy fines but we need to think of this as child abuse because that is what making pornography available without strict age verification is, so we need criminal law. We must discuss whether the approach taken in some US states, where civil liability is attached as well to those who fail to protect children through strict age verification, is the way to go.

As we come to the end of another term, there are many things that divide us in this Seanad but on the content of this Bill, I think we can find much common ground. We must protect children and make our society safe for women to walk the streets and go about their daily lives realising that the men around them see them not as objects but in a respectful, empathic way as equal partners in humanity. It is on that basis that I propose this Bill today.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I am very happy to second the Bill and co-sign it. Exposure to pornographic content at a young age can have detrimental effects on a child's development and mental health. Various studies have shown the negative impact of early exposure to pornography on children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics noted that exposure to sexual content can lead to risky sexual behaviour and desensitisation to violence. Research from the University of Montreal found it is associated with negative attitudes towards women and violence. Exposing the developing mind of a child in prepubescent and pubescent stages to pornography creates the perfect conditions to create sexual predators and violent predators of sexual crimes.

In one of his final interviews, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy stated that during his time in prison, he met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like him, "And without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception, deeply influenced and consumed by addiction to pornography.” This was in a time before the Internet and social media. Although his account is anecdotal, we cannot ignore this shared behaviour among sexual and violent offenders.

It has been long established that those who commit sexual crimes are more often than not the victim of a predator themselves. Therefore, we cannot ignore the correlation and impact of sexual exposure in any form on the mind of a developing child. We have currently, in the care of this State at this time, children affected who are highly sexualised and need around-the-clock care and attention due to the trauma they lived through or the danger they present to others.

Additional studies commissioned by the European Parliament and the University of New Hampshire highlighted the risks of early exposure to pornography such as distorted perceptions of sexuality and increased risk of risky sexual behaviours. The Australian Institute of Family Studies also found that exposure to explicit sexual content can lead to desensitisation, distorted views of sex and negative attitudes towards consent and healthy relationships. It is crucial for parents, caregivers, educators and policymakers to be aware of these findings and take proactive measures to protect children from inappropriate content. By understanding the implications of exposure to pornography at a young age and implementing strategies to limit children's access to such content, society can work together to safeguard children's well-being and promote their healthy development.

Education, support and communications about sexuality and media literacy are key components in addressing the impact of pornography on children and promoting their overall well-being. I welcome this Bill. I am glad to see cross-party support for it. I hope it will become effective soon. I urge the Minister to make it her goal to drive this Bill through all Stages before this Government finishes its mandate. Yesterday, we became aware that 33 children are missing in this State. Some of them were in State care. The last thing we want to hear is that these children have been victims of human trafficking. Will the Minister make it her goal to push this Bill through before the Government finishes its tenure?

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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Go raibh maith agat as an deis an t-ábhar ríthábhachtach seo a phlé agus gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir Mullen agus leis na comhurraitheoirí as é a ardú.

I thank Senator Mullen and the Bill's cosponsors for raising this important issue. I will not oppose the Bill. The intention of the Bill is to prevent children from accessing pornographic material on the Internet. As a parent, I am aware of and share concerns regarding children accessing inappropriate and harmful online content. As the Minister with responsibility for media, online safety is a key priority for me. I brought the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act through this House, with significant input from many Senators, which was welcomed by stakeholders and particularly children’s rights organisations such as CyberSafeKids and the ISPCC. This landmark legislation is central to creating a robust legislative framework. It was through this Act that the independent regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, was formally established just over 12 months ago. Online safety is a key priority of mine. In fact, it is a key priority of this Government. In particular, it is this Government's and my priority to ensure the protection of children online. This includes protection from age-inappropriate content like pornography. It is for this reason that I will not oppose the Bill today.

However, it is important to state that there are a number of significant legal and technical issues with the Bill's approach to addressing this matter. The main issue is that the Bill does not set out any role for Coimisiún na Meán, Ireland's online safety and media regulator. An coimisiún is at the heart of Ireland's online safety framework which is built around the recent landmark legislative measures of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, the Digital Services Act and the terrorist content online regulation. The online safety framework requires online platforms to put in place systems and processes to reduce the availability of harmful online content and address access to age-inappropriate online content. It puts the onus on these platforms to ensure their services meet their obligations and there are severe penalties, up to and including criminal sanctions, for non-compliance.

It is important to note that Ireland is not alone in building this online safety framework. It is interwoven with related robust EU measures. This is important because Ireland alone cannot make the Internet safer for children. We must do it together, in collaboration with our fellow EU member states and the European Commission. Since I was last in the Seanad discussing online safety in April of this year, Coimisiún na Meán has published a revised draft of its online safety code which it intends to adopt later this year. This is a major positive development. I commend an coimisiún on the work it has undertaken to date to create a safer online environment.

Crucially, the code will be binding and will focus in particular on ensuring the safety of children from harmful online content. It will oblige video-sharing platform services established in Ireland to protect children from harmful and age-inappropriate content like pornography. This also encompasses a wide range of other content, including serious cyberbullying, racist and xenophobic material and material that encourages or promotes eating disorders, self-harm or suicide. The measures these video-sharing platform services must take to deliver on this protection for children include the operation of age verification systems, which includes age assurance measures. The measures taken must be proportionate to the content and type of content permitted on particular services. For instance, those designated services that allow pornographic material to be uploaded by users must operate appropriate age assurance mechanisms to ensure children cannot encounter this type of material. The online safety code will also provide for requirements around the operation of content rating systems, parental controls, and effective reporting, flagging and complaint mechanisms. These measures will further safeguard children against harmful and age-inappropriate content such as pornography. Once the code is applied, it can be enforced by Coimisiún na Meán, including through significant financial penalties of up to €20 million or 10% of turnover. In addition, continued non-compliance can lead to criminal sanctions for company directors and senior managers.

It is important to note that the services in the scope of the online safety code are limited to those established in Ireland for the purposes of their European operations. This therefore includes services such as X, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube. This limitation is in place because the online safety code implements the EU’s audiovisual media services directive. Enshrined in how the directive works is the country-of-origin principle. It means that services are regulated in the EU member state of establishment. The concept ensures a coherency of regulation, making it easier for services to operate across the EU while also ensuring widespread compliance with these regulatory standards.

For services established in another member state, it is the responsibility of that member state to ensure that platform’s services are subject to the standard of regulation set out by the directive. Three websites are regularly mentioned in this area: Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat. These websites are not established in Ireland and therefore are not regulated by Coimisiún na Meán regarding the audiovisual media services directive and the online safety code but by the relevant regulator in their EU member state of establishment. This does not mean that these websites are not regulated in the EU. On the contrary, under the Digital Services Act, the most stringent of its obligations apply to very large online platforms, VLOPs, and very large online search engines, VLOSEs. The three websites I mentioned - Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat - are designated as VLOPs. The European Commission enforces the Digital Services Act in respect of VLOPs and VLOSEs, with the support of the network of digital services co-ordinators across the EU. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland's digital services co-ordinator, which gives assurance in terms of seamless regulation across the various legislative measures.

Under the DSA, platforms must complete risk assessments and take effective measures to address any identified risks of exposure of children to inappropriate services, including by means of age verification or age assurance. The European Commission has already requested information from the three named websites on these particular issues, in particular on the age assurance mechanisms that those websites are operating. The penalties for noncompliance with the Digital Services Act are up to 6% of global turnover.

Separate to the code, it is important to note the work of the youth advisory committee established by Coimisiún na Meán on foot of a requirement in the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act. It is important that young people who are impacted by harmful online contact have a voice. This was a useful suggestion from the Seanad, and I was happy to take it on board and include it in the legislation. The committee comprises representatives from nine national youth groups, including the Children's Rights Alliance and CyberSafeKids, along with nine individuals under the age of 25. As is also required under the legislation, an coimisiún consulted with this committee during the development of the online safety code and briefed the committee after the revised draft was published.

There are also a range of non-legislative initiatives being taken at EU level in this area, such as the EU task force on age verification, which is working on practical guidelines relating to the age assurance measures and the better Internet for kids strategy, which aims to produce a code of conduct on age-appropriate design and an age verification toolkit. It is important that we continue to contribute to these initiatives, to ensure better online safety measures.

In the wider discussion of this issue, there has been mention of measures that some US states have introduced or are in the process of introducing, specifically age verification measures to access pornographic websites. In response, I understand that some of those websites have withdrawn from those US states. The legal and regulatory environment in the EU is very different from that of the US. The US has no online safety regulator or state-wide online safety legal framework. This means individual states can act independently in this respect.

We have online safety legislation that applies across the EU, enforced by the European Commission and independent regulators in each member state. This means that Ireland cannot act unilaterally, nor should it. For example, I understand France sought to implement its own national legislation on age verification and age assurance and the European Commission has notified France that such laws would be contrary to the DSA. It is my view that by participating in a unified and coherent EU approach, as Ireland is doing, and working with the European Commission, we will bring all the platforms, including those named platforms, to account and we will achieve the aim of protecting our children from age-inappropriate content.

Moving to Senator Mullen's Bill itself, I will address some of the other legal and technical issues. First, there are potential legal conflicts with the country-of-origin principle, a concept I have already mentioned. The principle is long established under European law, strongly supported by Ireland and committed to in our national digital strategy. This Bill, however, seeks to impose obligations on online services that are established in other EU member states and therefore undermines this principle. Recent decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union on similar issues have been in line with this principle, and the European Commission would likely strongly object to any effort to breach it.

The Bill also appears to provide for ministerial powers to create regulations to supplement the Bill's provisions. On first examination, I would be concerned that there is insufficient legal basis and a lack of appropriate limits set out in the Bill. These provisions also fail to consider the statutory role and regulatory independence of Coimisiún na Meán, which is a requirement under the audiovisual media services directive, the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act and the Digital Services Act. These issues cannot be ignored, no matter how important the policy priority.

Other provisions of the Bill do not appear to be sufficiently clear in terms of the obligations that are to be imposed. For instance, section 2 states simply that a website or application that is accessible on the Internet containing pornographic material shall not be accessible to children in Ireland. Given the proposed potential offences, further clarity would be of benefit and probably necessary. Those offences are connected with requirements under sections 2 and 3 of the Bill but appear to conflict with the liability exemptions under the Digital Services Act. Under the Digital Services Act, hosting services should not be liable for specific illegal content made available by a user, as long as the service does not have knowledge of the illegal content and, once it becomes aware of it, works expeditiously to remove or disable access to it. As mentioned, the offences appear to conflict with this article.

I agree with Senator Mullen that we need to tackle the accessibility of age-inappropriate online content, in particular pornographic material, to children. For that reason, I am not opposing the Bill. It is also for that reason - the importance of protecting our children - that the Government has put in place a new online safety and media regulator, supported it in recruiting additional staff and prioritised significant legislative measures to give it teeth. Just yesterday, the Digital Services (Levy) Bill was debated here and completed its passage through the Houses. That legislation will enable an coimisiún to support its role by levying industry in respect of its functions. This is vital to ensure that an coimisiún can effectively fulfil its function of keeping our children safe and ensure that platforms pay for the cost of regulation. Nevertheless, I do not oppose the Bill and I thank Senator Mullen and the Bill's cosponsors for raising the issue.

Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail)
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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.

Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I will begin by supporting the spirit of the Bill. It has a laudable objective, that we could arrive at a position where we could prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from accessing pornography. However, I do not think the Bill is the answer. Although I note the Minister is not opposing the Bill I would understand if she was.

There is no question that when it comes to pornography, full stop, we need a greater education and I see that increasing. In the education provided in schools we need very clear instruction to discern between the reality and beauty of human intimate relationships versus what is seen in pornography. We see Generation X breaking down intimacy from sexual relations and not seeing a concurrence between that. There was a report this week on that issue. The idea that we need to tackle pornography and its impact on our society is laudable and I agree 100% and support that.

However, the Bill is problematic for all the reasons the Minister outlined. There is adequate regulation and oversight. We need it to be cross-border. Ireland on its own cannot tackle the damage done by pornography and by everything else that comes at children and adults online. Coimisiún na Meán is still in its embryonic stage and is already doing a great job. I have great hopes for what it will do in the future. I thank Cece Walson who is in the Gallery. She is interning with me at the moment. She and I went through the Bill and discussed and debated all of the points.

First, there is a problem with the definition of "pornographic material". Defining it as " any image or sound that depicts or purports to depict sexual activity or sexual exploitation” would be problematic for any streaming service that has a film rated 18-plus. Any film that has sexual content would depict or purport to depict. It would put films that are in the 18-plus into the category of pornographic material and thereby requiring age verification for people to go on Netflix. There are unintended consequences of this Bill that are not suitable. With the "purported to depict" definition we could have a situation of, when Meg Ryan depicts or fakes an orgasm or does the gestures in a restaurant in the movie" When Harry Met Sally", that would be purporting to depict sexual activity. Things like that would be under the definition of "pornographic material". The Bill would have benefited from looking at a situation where the definitions within child grooming related to for the purposes of sexual gratification, rather than just merely watching the movie. The definition could do with being very severely refined and dealt with.

The other piece of this is the data collection mechanism and the idea there have to be documents produced. What are people going to do? Anyone who wants to access an online site would have to produce or submit a copy of their passport, which would be held for up to five years. That in itself is highly problematic. For a start, who wants to hand over documentation that could lead to his or her identity being given to anonymous entities abroad? That is not okay. What will happen with age verification in time will be that artificial intelligence, AI, will overcome age verification online and for anything that is accesses through a mobile phone. In time, AI will have a solution that will protect the privacy of the individual but be able to assess the age of the people who are accessing the content. There is a real problem with the data collection; the data controller and the fact that it permits third-party processors in an era of cybersecurity risks. The idea of the mass holding of identity information for age verification purposes is highly problematic so that is not the solution either.

We do need to move to a place where there are solutions on this and that comes back to the regulation we have in place, believing in the regulation and supporting it and looking at that cross-border element. Even the definitions of the offence are also problematic. It is a person and given the size of these companies a fine of €500,000 is a drop in the ocean for them. Who will be called in and be imprisoned? We have problems with the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 where there are accidents at work as to who actually would be imprisoned and it actually comes down to fines. These sorts of companies can soak up a fine of €500,000 just like that. The solutions in the likes of the Digital Services Act of doing a percentage of turnover and in the general data protection regulation, GDPR, of a percentage of global turnover is the greatest deterrent and has the greatest implication on forcing compliance with those sorts of things.

While I very much support the spirit of the Bill, it is not practical and it needs huge changes. I believe we already have the regulations in place that we just have to believe in, support and allow to grow and manifest and actually work. They will in time.

Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail)
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I commend the Bill and support the principle of it. Human relationships are complex and many young people are bombarded with information. A lot of it is information they do not seek out and this is because they have smartphones and are accessing the Internet. Many online and mostly unregulated sources do not provide them with the most accurate and appropriate information. We know a lot of the information young people access can be false and damaging. I believe that as a society we have an obligation to ensure information - and the correct information - that young people see and receive relating to sex and sexuality is appropriate and consistent. We as legislators certainly have a duty in that regard. We know that children are now far more susceptible to being exposed to pornography than ever before. Unfortunately, that can often lead to other really difficult situations . As the Minister will be aware, the former education committee that both she and I were members of, did quite a substantive report about relationships and sexuality education, RSE, and the need to revise and upgrade it. We were faced with the challenge of how we deal with the whole area of pornography.

In fact it was very much a learning curve for us as members. I was hesitant even to put the word "pornography" into a report. We had quite a discussion on this. We realised that by not putting it in, we were not facing up to the concerns there are around pornography. We put it in, in terms of being concerned about the impact on young people of accessing pornography when at a younger age and not in a position to make informed judgments in relation to it. The committee was contacted by many people who did not like the fact that the committee used the word "pornography". However, we included it because we wanted to be realistic about it. There was no point in engaging in many sessions with people who were committed, sensitive and open to us about issues and challenges, and not recognising that pornography was a huge concern, both within the educational world and within society.

It was a wake-up call for us. We learned that children as young as 11, and in a European context children as young as six and seven, access pornography online. The best way to deal with this is to try to be as open and honest as possible and be clear that there can be very negative consequences from accessing pornography. There is unprecedented exposure right across Europe in terms of children being exposed to pornographic imagery. We know from the research that this can be detrimental to their psychological and physical development. This exposure brings increased risks of harmful gender stereotyping, in some cases addiction to pornography, early and unhealthy sexual relationships, as well as difficulties with developing balanced, respectful relationships in future life. Early exposure to pornography can result in the blurring of boundaries of normal curiosity towards sexuality and socially acceptable behaviour. It undermines respect for human dignity, privacy and physical integrity.

Across Europe, law enforcement authorities have reported a massive spike in cases of harmful sexual behaviour by children. As a member of the Council of Europe, I knew some reports had been done on this and I found some interesting information. Across the member states we need to address gaps in relevant legislation and practice to ensure there are easy-to-use parental tools and that ad filtering and ad-blocking tools are built in by default, and by supporting the use of age verification tools. Based on lessons learned from experience, some countries, particularly France, have gone about age verification in a different way. That is by use of credit cards, as nobody under a certain age can have a credit card. We need to look at the measures that have been implemented elsewhere.

I have very little time left. In regard to an unconscious bias, in one particular area, the French Parliament passed age verification legislation in 2020. In the UK, the Government introduced the Digital Economy Act in 2017, which was a huge milestone in protecting children from going online. In one particular French-----

Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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The Senator is over time.

Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail)
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My time is up. I have plenty more to say.

Michael McDowell (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister. I fully accept that the Bill could, on Second, Third and Fourth Stage, be improved and made more specific and the like. However, the principle of the Bill seems to have universal support in this House.

The principle of age limits being monitored by domestic legislation in respect of other member states is already breached, if you like, in the Government's proposed legislation in respect of the sale of tobacco products to persons under the age of 21. In that case, age verification procedures are imposed on any country within the European Union which proposes to sell tobacco products online into Ireland. In those circumstances we require that any such sale by an online process can only be done by somebody who respects and implements age verification. That would, if the tobacco Bill becomes law, be restricting the age at which cross-border tobacco sales can take place to people over the age of 21 and requires age verification to achieve that end.

Whereas it is all very well in EU terms to say that the principle of origin applies, what about online access to non-EU sites? That is a point which strikes me. We can put all our eggs in the EU basket and require the European Commission and Coimisiún na Meán to implement EU standards as best they can. However, I wonder about access to entirely foreign and non-EU websites and sources of material. Has that been considered? Given that the Government is not opposing this Bill and that it will eventually, if time permits, go to Committee Stage, such issues should be considered in that context rather than simply thrown out as seemingly insurmountable objects to dealing with the issues that I have raised.

Those are a few comments I make in support of the principle of this legislation. I will make one further general point. We seem to be ambivalent on the subject of childhood in this country. There are people who say, including in the Minister's party, that children under the age of 18 should be allowed to vote in Dáil elections. Adolescence means becoming an adult. We have fixed an age of majority at the age of 18. People argued that somehow it would be a good idea if people who we do not permit to smoke, buy a lottery ticket, enter the contract of marriage, go into licensed premises except in certain circumstances are nonetheless mature enough to make decisions about national political issues. The Constitution was amended in the fourth amendment to bring the voting age down from 21 to 18 but left at 21 the age qualification to become a Member of Seanad Éireann or the Dáil. On a general point, it seems there is confusion about the status of childhood, when it ends, why it should end and why it is important that it should be protected. If a young person under the age of 18 commits a murder, he or she is given anonymity and is not subject to mandatory sentences, on the basis of immaturity.

On the other hand, we, as a society, are invited by some people to back extending voting rights to them. I think a lot of this is based on the proposition that they feel their particular ideologies would be more attractive to immature minds.

I believe in childhood. I also believe there has to be an age of majority, that we have to be consistent in its application and that there is no need to end or dilute childhood. It is under sufficient pressure as things stand, I would argue, from pornography and social media generally. I am not talking about sexual matters only. I am talking about bullying, opinion forming, falsehood, false information, and misinformation. Young people are subject to extraordinary pressures in this day and age and we must, as a society, be coherent and consistent in our approach to whether people are or are not adults, and we should not begin to chip away at that principle when it suits us and invoke it, for instance, in respect of asylum seekers under the age of 18 being totally differently treated when it does not suit us.

Tom Clonan (Independent)
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I echo the universal support for the spirit of the Bill and, having read the Bill, it is not motivated by a desire to censor or in some way restrict freedom of expression in any way but is motivated by a duty of care towards children.

Smartphones really proliferated in the mid-noughties, so we now have a generation who are reaching majority who have been exposed to that technology in a way that perhaps we in this Chamber have not. I was very interested in the research cited by Senator O'Loughlin into the psychological changes that can occur, particularly in minors when they are exposed to this kind of material. We know from research into controlled substances and alcohol that they have a disproportionately effect on children and teens. We have a great responsibility, therefore, to do everything we can to protect children, especially with the ubiquity of screens and smartphones.

Even in respect of the observation that children as young as six year of age can access pornography, I think any child with a phone in their hand can accidentally access it or be exposed to it. However, it is not beyond our ingenuity and our collective talents to deal with this. I rather suspect that Senator Seery Kearney is correct that the solution to this will ultimately be driven by artificial intelligence and the manner in which that can be harnessed for this purpose.

It is a very good conversation to have. I welcome the fact the Minister is not opposing the Bill. As Senator McDowell said, it is legislation that could be amended and refined. It is a good starting point and this is an extremely important conversation. As a parent to four teenagers and young adults, I would share the concerns expressed by Senator McGreehan about consent and how access to this material can blur the boundaries and the lines of understanding around consent. That has the capacity to destroy lives. It can have life-limiting and life-altering consequences for people, so it is an extremely important conversation for us to have. I welcome the Bill and the discussion that flows from it.

Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)
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My apologies but I had to leave for a short while to attend my committee to provide a quorum.

I thank the Minister for coming today and I thank Senator Mullen for bringing forward this all-important Bill. The legislation highlights what is out there and the pitfalls that can be experienced by the young and the not so young.

The Minister has gone a long way in terms of her Department and what she does. I compliment the sentiments in the Bill. The legislation has pluses and minuses. There may be legal challenges or issues in the Bill, so perhaps there are some issues in the Bill that could be taken on board. I refer to that whole area around pornography and digital safety.

I have young nephews and nieces myself. I am not saying they have been looking but there are a lot of ads on phones and whatever else that I have seen on ordinary phones. Therefore, it is important we protect people going forward.

I compliment all those involved in bringing this Bill forward. I also compliment the Minister and I look forward to the workings of, maybe, the combination of some of the proposals in the future.

Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Senator Byrne for her contribution. Senator Mullen has five minutes to sum up.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I thank the Acting Chair. Again, I thank the Minister for taking this debate and for her encouraging words and challenging words in respect of the contents of the Bill. I also thank all of my friends and colleagues for their contributions. I learned something from each and every contribution.

I would see myself very much as a free speech advocate. I am very concerned, as people in the House will know, about the implications of the so-called hate speech legislation, its implications for our democratic engagement with each other and our civil society needs and rights. However, I have always been clear that I am not a freedom of expression absolutist. Certainly, when it comes to the kind of freedom of expression involved in the purveying of pornography and pushing it at children, I have very strong feelings indeed, which I think are shared by the vast majority of people in our society.

I make no apologies for setting this debate in the context not just of the need to tackle violence against women but broader than that, namely, children's development and, as Senator McDowell eloquently put it, children's right to a childhood, so to speak. That is why I talk about looking at issues in the round and not to be afraid of information about the sources of crime in our country. Nobody would be happier than me if there were reassuring findings in that area, but we can never be afraid of hard questions and data, which gives us the facts to help us know what we are dealing with and then know how to cope with it. That was the context for what I had to say about the inflow of people into our country and the connection of that, if there is a connection, with crime statistics. I do not think that we can ever be afraid of information provided we have a bona fide approach to and intention in the seeking of accurate information.

Regarding the changes that would be needed, and the challenges, in this Bill, I totally accept what has been said. I am conscious of Terry Prone, I think it was, who said in her advice to people who wanted to write, "Don't get it right, get it written." From my perspective, the important thing is to get this Bill before this House as soon as possible. I am already working on the kind of amendments that would address issues such as the one raised by my friend, Senator Seery Kearney, about the definitional issues around pornography, etc. There are other areas too where I think we could certainly amend this Bill.

As regards the core question and the issue that has been brought out by the contribution made by the Minister in her reply to the Bill, it is the question of the Bill's interface with European law. I totally acknowledge that the role of Coimisiún na Meán could be integrated more into the Bill. If European bureaucracy becomes the enemy of the protection of children in this country, then people will have one more reason to develop a suspicion of the EU. I remember being very concerned about a very famous case, of which we are all aware, where the Garda, through good detective work involving the accessing of phone records, was able to bring in a prosecution. However, it later emerged that European law would frustrate the gathering of information of that kind in the future, and that that would be to the detriment, in my view, of future prosecutions. This is the type of situation where governments represented at the European Council need to be banging the table and saying we need adjustments to European law so that we can legislate for our particular needs and areas. I would be very worried if we were prevented from legislating in more detail on this subject simply because the European Union is already doing a certain amount of commendable work in this area.

I see the European directives as providing the necessary minimum and I have no problem that the regulation for organisations that are based in other member states would be done by the regulator in those States. However, it is unconscionable to me that because there is an EU regulatory apparatus in being that we could not then make a decision to go further, and not in a way that contradicts, because remember these European regulations are not about giving rights to the purveyors of pornography and of other stuff online. It is about securing a certain level of protection for people.

If we, as a polity, decide we want to go further then we should be able to do so and the Minister should be banging the table at a European level to say we will implement the directive in full and that while nothing that we will legislate for ourselves will contradict it, we will go further. That is the kind of ambition that I would like to hear from the Government. Senator McDowell brought it out very clearly in the context of tobacco. He also, rightly, identified the issue with purveyors of pornography who are not based either in Ireland or elsewhere in the European Union. There is also the fact that the European Union regulations to date apply to very large platforms whose turnover is a minimum of 45 million subscribers, as I understand it.

I ask the Minister to engage further with this issue about how we, as a country, may legislate further in this area and seek support for that at European level because I am concerned that the European directive, as implemented in legislation, does not go far enough, and that the Coimisiún na Meán guidelines and code do not go far enough. Perhaps that can be improved but I think there needs to be criminal law in primary legislation in this country to augment what has been achieved so far through the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, etc.

Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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Next Monday.

Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister, Senators and staff of the House for their co-operation and, indeed, contributions by Members.

The House stands adjourned until 12 noon next Monday in accordance with the orders of the Seanad today.