Social Media
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

It is clear that the current legislation and regulatory framework are not working. The Minister of State talked a lot about the obligations on these platforms to allow users to adjust their settings and basically push back against algorithmic profiling and so on, but it is clear that it is not working. There have been multiple US cases recently where we see that the design of these products themselves promotes addiction, and the secret sauce behind all of them is the algorithm. Whatever the Minister of State is describing in terms of the existing regulatory framework, it is not working.
The Data Protection Commission, DPC, essentially failed because if it had properly enforced the GDPR, we would not have had to set up Coimisiún na Meán. It now has a whole suite of European Union regulation to enforce, but it is still failing. We are now setting up an AI office within the Department of enterprise, which is just going to add to the complexity of a regulatory framework that is not working.
This is not just about children. These algorithms are toxic and problematic for all of us. I will go into detail on how. This is not working as it stands. Users are not to be blamed.

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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