Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-01-22 ============================================================ Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary North Yesterday, at the media committee, we had testimony from Gráinne Seoige in relation to her experiences during the general election and subsequently. It was harrowing and I thank her for coming forward. We have all heard of many other cases of what has happened to many people, mostly women, in regard to AI tools and social media companies. In fact, I would call them publishers. They are not platforms; they are actually e-commerce companies. They make money and this is how they make money. We need to think about how we are going to deal with this. People have come to me and to many others in this Chamber as well. We need robust legislation. The simple fact of the matter is that technology is moving so fast, it is very difficult for any Legislature, including us, to keep up. We in the Labour Party believe there is a lacuna in the law, particularly regarding how AI- or computer-generated sexualised images of adults are being created and then distributed. We have decided as a party we need to bring in legislation to deal with this. Today, I am publishing the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences (Amendment) Bill 2026. It is basically an update to Coco's Law, which our party brought forward and which a Minister sitting opposite finally got through the Oireachtas. It provides amendments to Coco's Law to change the definition of intimate images to include AI- or computer-generated images. It also creates a new offence of creating such an image of a person without the consent of that person. Third, and crucially, borrowing from law on child sexual abuse, it makes it an offence to knowingly facilitate the generation of such images for the purposes of publication or sharing. This is critical legislation. It will deal with the e-commerce companies as publishers. Yesterday, the testimony was that when Gráinne Seoige went to the Garda, at the end of all the chasing, gardaí came up against an individual who would not give over their phone. Ms Seoige would have had to look for a court order. How long was that going to take and was it practical? Ultimately, this needs to be dealt with at publisher-e-commerce company level. This legislation deals with the individual but it also deals with the company. I do not care whether the Government takes this Bill and changes it, improves it or whatever. I am calling on it to engage with the legislation. We do not have time for this to go on and on. I ask that in the coming weeks, working collectively with us and whomever else wants to be involved, we bring into law a change to deal with this lacuna and ensure the publishers - the e-commerce companies - will be dealt with by the law for facilitating such behaviour. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-22