Online Safety: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-26 ============================================================ Lorraine Clifford-Lee (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. The Minister of State is welcome to the Chamber and his presence shows that a cross-governmental approach will need to be taken. I will touch on a few points. Chief among them is the impact of AI and social media on our democracies worldwide. We are lucky in Ireland that we have not seen our democratic system totally upended like other countries, but that is always on the horizon. In every election we have stood in, we can see the creeping influence of social media, foreign influences, the spreading of deepfakes and so on. The different examples internationally are too numerous to mention in the limited time available. The algorithm is sending people down rabbit holes and is really harmful. We are seeing extremism develop in every aspect of society. That is harmful for society and for the individual. The algorithm does not allow for diversity of opinion. It just picks up on what people have watched or listened to and feeds them more and more of that. That is really harmful and we need to properly tackle the social media companies in relation to their algorithms. Government must have oversight of the algorithms because they are, in themselves, very harmful. The digital tools created to cause harm, to undress women and children, have no good or moral purpose. It cannot be argued that they have any role to play in society. They are harmful tools and social media companies need to just ban them. There is no proper functioning reason for them. They have caused harm already and will continue to cause great harm. I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, on the very strong stance she took when this blew up a number of weeks ago. She tackled the social media companies head-on. I was listening to a discussion on "Morning Ireland" earlier in relation to an Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, report showing a big fall-off in school attendance across the country since Covid. The drop in school attendance has led to lesser outcomes for the children involved. I cannot help but wonder whether the impact of social media on young people's lives has led to this drop-off in school attendances. We see anxiety rising in young people. Is that linked to social media? I think so. Many teachers have told me children are coming in to school without the fine motor skills that they would expect a five-year-old to have. They cannot turn a page. They have never had a book read to them. They are having difficulty holding a crayon. This is all linked to smartphone use and social media addiction in the home. I say this as a parent and as someone who has often had to stop myself from sitting down for the night and doomscrolling. As parents we have to realise that what we do ourselves is impacting children. If they do not see their parents read a newspaper or book, are they going to suddenly start reading books when they are in school? I do not think so. If children who are starting school have never seen somebody turn a page, that is really worrying and we reallye really have to look at it. We need to have more awareness of the impact of smart devices in particular. Some of us grew up in an age when children watched TV but smart devices are something completely different. We interact with them in a different manner and they are far more addictive than television was back in our day. I am really glad to see that we will be prioritising digital safety in the upcoming EU Presidency. Billionaires are profiting off harm and we cannot say that loudly enough. They are profiting off the harm of all of us and we have already seen the devastating consequences of billionaires feeling that no laws impact them, and that is just going to increase. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's response to the motion. While we might have differing approaches to this issue across the House, it is something that we are all extremely concerned about. --- 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/seanad/2026-02-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-26