Protection of Voice and Image Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-06-11 ============================================================ Malcolm Byrne (FF), Wicklow-Wexford I thank Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Ó Cearúil and the Minister of State for their contributions and their support. The Minister of State outlined the current legislative provision in this area but the reality is it is not working. If the legislation were working, we would not be seeing the proliferation of deepfakes and other continuing problems. While I acknowledge that the jurisdiction of Norwich Pharmacal orders has been extended to the Circuit Court, that is still prohibitive for many people, particularly those who do not understand the justice system. The Minister of State referred to Coco's Law, which came about following the incredible campaigning by Jackie Fox. She was often told there was legislation already in place to deal with much of what she was seeking. However, Coco's Law, and the public information campaign that followed, was so successful because while people do not necessarily need to know the detail of the legislation, it is fairly certain that most people in Ireland now know not to use intimate images of others without their permission. We need to get to a situation where there is an awareness in society that we should not use somebody's voice, image or likeness in a malign way without that person's permission. We might think that should be obvious but, unfortunately, it is not. In order to enforce that, we need to have criminal sanctions in place. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh said, the legislation is not a silver bullet. A broader series of measures must be in place. Our challenge is that we need to shift to a situation where we enforce a digital duty of care on technology companies such that they have consideration, before they allow products onto the market, as to how those products may be used. If they are misused, there must be the capability to take action. AI has incredible potential and I am a huge advocate of it as a tool to achieve particular goals. However, we know the consequences of its misuse, which include fraud, theft of intellectual property, which is a big issue for creatives, and suicide. We all need to understand our digital identity and what it means. Talking about Coco's Law reminds me of one of the successes of the GDPR. There probably are not many people who have read the entire regulation and know it inside out but, overwhelmingly, people do know that they must not use the data of others for any purpose save that for which they have expressly given permission. We need to move to thinking in the same way about digital identities, namely, that people cannot misuse another person's identity and voice for malign purpose. We certainly need to protect freedom of expression in the context of satire and so on but this legislation deals very specifically with cases where such usage is for malign purposes and in, many cases, for particular gain. I spent many hours dealing with the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill, both as a member of the media committee and a Member of the Seanad at the time. A lot of the work that was put into that legislation was quite far-reaching, including the setting up of the Office of the Online Safety Commissioner. One of the concerns I had was that we were not taking strong enough action against some of the technology companies when they failed to take action. It was always my view that where a provider wilfully or recklessly allows an online harm to go out on a platform, there should be consequences and individuals should be held responsible. The problem, as the Minister of State mentioned, is that a lot of technology companies will just write off significant financial sanctions as business costs. I do not accept and never did accept that provision for non-compliance leading to criminal sanction is strong enough within existing legislation. If we have been successful in that regard, why then, as part of our EU Presidency agenda, have we said that online safety is one of Ireland's top priorities? Clearly, it persists as a challenge and a problem. As Deputy Ó Cearúil mentioned, this legislation was introduced before the arrival of Grok and so on. Those developments are impacting on society in many different ways. Our first obligation as legislators is to ensure the safety of our citizens, in the online space as much as in the offline space. We are going to see the misuse of digital identities grow in a whole variety of ways. While I am really appreciative of the Government's decision to allow this legislation to progress, I ask that there be movement to address these issues. I am not precious as to which exact legislation is progressed but it is clear that what we have currently is not strong enough. I recognise there will be challenges regarding extraterritoriality and all of that but there is an obligation on us to be able to protect people right now. It is critical that we take action on this. In the same way as there was a campaign regarding the misuse of intimate images, we need to start talking about protection of digital identity and how people can protect their own voice, image and likeness. We need a dedicated campaign about copyright both specifically for the creative industries and more widely. My view is that when people are having digital family conversations, they will have to introduce family safe words. If members of my family want to make sure it is actually me they are talking to, they could ask me for the family safe word. Do we need to start looking at public information campaigns in that regard? I encourage the Minister of State to work on building an awareness of our digital identities. Citizens do not necessarily need to have recourse to all the legislative provisions she listed but they need to know why their digital identity is important and that sanctions will be imposed on those who, for malign purposes, seek to misuse another's digital identity. I very much thank the Minister of State for accepting the legislation. I look forward to engaging further as it progresses. --- 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/dail/2026-06-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-11