Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27
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Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

I welcome the MEPs and thank them for being with us. Many parents across Europe are concerned about the problems caused by their children having excessive, and excessively early, exposure to screen time, particularly the challenge posed by young people's access to social media. Many countries are taking their own initiative on this matter. Energy has been focused on the specific issue of whether tech companies should be prevented from opening social media accounts for young people. There is widespread misunderstanding of this issue. Some people think what is being posited is a ban on young people accessing social media. That is not what it is about; it is about whether young people should be able to open accounts because it is through accounts that tech companies challenge.
The Minister for communications said to us at a committee meeting today that European countries take different points of view. Some have a laissez-faire approach to restrictions on young people's access to media. What are the MEPs' views? Can the European Parliament take an initiative in this area? Will we hear the voice of Parliament? it is important that Ireland would legislate on its own for whatever we believe to be in the common good, but what happens in Europe matters.
I add to that the concern about the widespread availability of pornography and the impact that is having on young people. It seems bizarre that it is easier for a young person to access pornography online than to buy a pair of shoes, gamble or buy vapes, for which they would be required to use a credit card. Young people are being damaged by their exposure to pornography and it seems Europe is not acting strongly enough to protect them in this area. I would be grateful for our guests' thoughts and views on that.

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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/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27