An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-26
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Joe O'Reilly (FG), Labour Panel

I recently attended a very interesting seminar organised by the Garda in my region in Cavan to commemorate Coco's Law. Coco's mother, Jackie Fox, gave a harrowing account of what gave rise to Coco's Law. I rise to ask the Deputy Leader if people will be informed that there is recourse to cyberbullying. When children are being bullied or teachers in classrooms are witnessing obscene bullying, etc. - there are teachers and pupils in the Gallery - there are recourses in the law. They should report it to the gardaí and the various social services. On the topics of pornography, violence and gambling, all of that comes online as well. We need robust age verification tools. The Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, has said that he is working towards those quickly. We need them. I would like a report from the Deputy Leader on that and maybe a debate on this whole area very soon. We need robust regulation. We need dialogue with the platforms here. They are based in Ireland, but it is nonsense to think that because they are based here that we should not have robust dialogue with them about this. Of course, we should. There should be strict regulation. The Deputy Leader will know that I did a report for the Council of Europe on this area. It was adopted by all the member states around the whole area of online abuse, including of young people. I ask the Deputy Leader to let us know about that and to organise a debate. I ask her to tell me what she is going to bring to the Government from it and what she knows the Government is doing.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-26