This morning I hosted a briefing with Uplift, ICCL and the Hope and Courage Collective. We talked about the dangers we all face online, including the security risks, the threats to democracy and the threats to our children, all posed by the lack of regulation of social media giants. We do not enforce the laws that we have. We were told by experts this morning that the perception internationally is that Ireland is not taking its responsibility seriously. We also heard about solutions, namely, making sure that recommender algorithms are turned off by default, so that people can choose what they are seeing online. We are pushing for this protection to be included in the EU democracy shield, which is currently on the desk of our own Irish Commissioner, Michael McGrath, and crucially enforcing the data protection laws that we have and making the Data Protection Commission fit for purpose. I would argue that the issue raised by Deputy Farrell and that features in The Irish Times today is exactly the kind of issue that will dealt with by this. Will this Government take action on these solutions to protect us and all of our children from online harm?

Yes, is the short answer. I go further than that and say we would be interested in working with the Deputy and across the House in relation to this. I am conscious that this is an area in which the Deputy has expertise and a significant background. It sounds like she met a number of other experts too. I am very concerned about this area in terms of the impact on our democracy, on our children and on public safety in general. Social media and digital media is a good thing but the regulation is not where it needs to be. I would be interested in receiving those solutions from the Deputy.

The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, is proactive in this area. For example, at the moment, we have a digital age of consent is 16. Clearly, that is not being applied by the companies. We need to legislatively address that. President Macron and others have said that if Europe is not going to move, they will move unilaterally on this. We are checking that out with our Minister and the Attorney General as what we can do within our own scope while pushing for more to be done at a European level.

Perhaps this is an area where I could ask the Minister to convene spokespeople or the likes from relevant political parties to see if we can derive some policy consensus in these areas.