Artificial Intelligence
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

I agree entirely. The Taoiseach has said that, "Social media is the public health issue of our time". It is nice that he has discovered it after voting against the Bill to ban recommender algorithms just a few months ago. However, does the Taoiseach think that this public health issue just stops as soon as people turn 16? Does he think that people are then suddenly immune to addictive design, to infinite scroll, to the manosphere and to pro-eating disorder content being spewed out at them? All of that will remain on social media if under-16s are barred from it because that is what is core to the big tech business model. We know from Australia that many under-16s find it easy to bypass the age verification. We cannot rely on it to keep our kids safe. The answer is very clear. It is what the media committee, the AI committee and every expert recommends: clean up social media at source by turning off the toxic algorithms that big tech profits from.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16