LAST UPDATE | 19 Sep

TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS said the Online Safety Summit held today “will ensure a collective focus across Government on effective implementation of the new Online Safety Code”.

Coimisiún na Meán is responsible for the Online Safety Framework, which aims to make digital services accountable for how they protect people, especially children, from harm online.

The framework will be adpoted next month. 

Harris and various ministers were briefed today by the Digital Regulators’ Group, which includes Coimisiún na Meán, the Data Protection Commission, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, and ComReg.

They were also briefed by An Garda Síochána on progress today, implementation plans in the future, and how the Government can support their work in Ireland and at EU level.

Speaking after the summit, Harris described the summit as “productive” and said the Online Safety Code is a “significant tool in ensuring a safe online environment”.

He added that Ireland is now at a “crucial point” in regulating the digital world and that Government today “re-iterated our strong commitment to ensuring our regulators are supported and enabled to carry out this work effectively”.

“I want to ensure that all citizens are aware of their rights and the obligations on platforms under this new online safety framework,” said Harris

He added that there is now an “opportunity” to “ensure we get this right for more vulnerable users such as children and young people”.

Harris also said that the “online world does not operate in some sort of parallel universe” and “the obligations that apply offline in terms of abiding by the laws of the land also need to apply online”.

He added that the Government has “significant tools at our disposal” with the the upcoming Online Safety Code and the Digital Services Act.

Meanwhile, Culture and Media Minister Catherine Martin noted that Coimisiún na Meán has a “central role in developing and enforcing a new Online Safety Framework, including a new Online Safety Code, which it plans to adopt next month”.

She described this as an “important milestone in addressing illegal and harmful online content and behaviour, including the exposure of children to harmful content”.

“This new Framework enables us to address some of the root causes of harm online, and today’s Summit highlights the focus and priority across Government on ensuring its effective implementation,” said Martin.

An updated draft Online Safety Code published in May meanwhile was criticised for not addressing “toxic” algorithms.

The final code will set binding rules that will apply to video-sharing platforms who have their EU Headquarters in Ireland.

Speaking in May, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said it was “disappointed that measures to address toxic algorithms have been removed from the Online Safety Code” and noted that a previous draft included requirements to turn off recommender systems.

The recommender system is an algorithm that uses data to suggest items that a social media user might be interested in.

An ICCL spokesperson said recommender systems “push hate and extremism into people’s feeds and inject content that glorifies self-harm and suicide into children’s feeds”.

CyberSafeKids also expressed concern at “the fact this code does not address the recommender system”.

A spokesperson for CyberSafeKids, an Irish charity which works to help children, parents and teachers navigate the online world, said in May that a lot of “harmful content coming through a child’s feed originates from this algorithm”.