Online Safety: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-26
============================================================

Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel

We have had a really good debate. It was very worthwhile to air all of the different views and opinions. The motion speaks for itself as it reads. There were very worthwhile contributions from those who wanted to go further, and from some who did not agree with everything that was in it. I take on board what the Minister of State has said about how the views will be reflected on.
One thing is incredibly clear: we are all concerned about online safety and we want to do the best we can to ensure our young people are kept safe and that they do not have access to all the evils of the dark world of the Internet but also that they have opportunities to use the Internet in a safe and wise way. All of the adults in children's lives have to set an example. I have heard different examples of what has been happening. Senator Duffy spoke about the meeting on Achill Island and bringing everyone together. I attended a meeting in Kildare town last year where a huge number of primary schools, practically all of them in south Kildare, had come together as parents to say the parents wanted to have this at primary school level.
We have so many stakeholders in all of this. People have different views. Internationally, there are a lot of different experiences. We need to learn from the experiences of other countries, but we also want to ensure that during our EU Presidency we shine a light on the good behaviours and do what we can to ensure we do not have the negative behaviours, but also be a leading light in that. In regard to the AI aspect, the fact we are having the special forum in October is important. The two go hand in hand. I really welcome the opportunity and thank my colleagues who spoke on this motion. I have no doubt there will be ongoing debates on online safety but this was an important pone. We really appreciate the Minister of State being with us. It shows the crossover between the Department of communications and the Department of justice, and there is a crossover with education too. We need to have collaboration right across government, with the help and support of those in Opposition too. I commend the motion to the House.

---

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