Children’s senator ‘can’t understand delay’ in appointing digital safety czar
SENATOR Catherine Noone has said she is strongly in favour of establishing a Digital Safety Commissioner and that she doesn’t ‘understand the delay’.
She also said the Cabinet should also consider creating a ‘minister for the online world’ the next time a government is formed.
The Fine Gael Senator was speaking just days after the broadcast of a chilling Channel 4 documentary about Facebook, which included the undercover filming of Dublin-based online moderators and sparked outrage over the content allowed on the social media site.
Ms Noone is herparty’s Seanad spokeswoman for Children and Youth Affairs, and was also part of the Oireachtas committee which earlier this year produced a report recommending the appointment of a Digital Safety Commissioner.
While she acknowledged the delay is perhaps because ‘it is not a straightforward office to set up’ as it is ‘not just one person; it would require a whole team’.
Ms Noone told the Mail: ‘In view of the way things are going with technology and the fact that the vast majority of young people spend a huge proportion of their lives online, I really think that we are going to need a minister for the online world [and] not only a Digital Safety Commissioner.
‘In the meantime, I do not understand what the delay is when it comes to a Digital Safety Commissioner and I wish somebody would explain to me what is causing the delay,’ she said. ‘I am quite receptive to reasonable explanation, but everything we have heard in the Children’s Committee and everything we have heard since is that there is only one thing to do in this scenario – to find somebody to oversee the behaviour of social media firms and others online…
‘There is a lacuna at the moment when it comes to legislation and this also needs to be addressed urgently.’ She added: ‘The revelations that we saw on Dispatches showed they are categorically willing to put money before their social responsibility.’
The Senator welcomed comments from the Taoiseach that he was looking at introducing fines for social media companies to ensure they uphold basic standards of decency, and she hailed it as being ‘very positive’.
But she believes in the absence of a Digital Safety Commissioner. ‘It is in a way like talking about introducing legislation for certain acts to be criminal, without having gardaí to police them,’ she said.
Fianna Fáil’s Thomas Byrne said the Taoiseach’s remarks about potential fines was simply ‘another example of Leo just saying something off the top of his head, speaking as a commentator – he might as well be a columnist in a newspaper offering his opinion’.
Speaking yesterday at Leinster House, Mr Byrne said: ‘Columnists are important, but the Taoiseach can actually act and do something.
‘So, I mean if he wants to be Taoiseach, let him be Taoiseach and do something about it.
‘There is a proposal there to have a Digital Safety Commissioner put in place and they have hummed and hawed about that again.’
He said this is ‘not a question of being anti-social media, we are all in favour of social media’, rather ‘it’s a question of regulating industries’.
‘Pretty much all industries are regulated; television is regulated, radio is regulated, newspapers are regulated to an extent as well. ‘That is all we are looking for. ‘And I think it is reasonable that be done,’ he said.