Social Media
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-15
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Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

The Deputy is right - it should not be there. It only encourages more of it and sends the wrong message to young people. I would appeal to the social media companies, particularly in the case the Deputy has raised this morning, that it be removed immediately. I am going to go and look at the Instagram account he raised today. It is shocking. We have strong regulation in place and I would appeal to the social media companies to respect that and regard it.
We are establishing the national AI office, as the Deputy knows, and it is incredibly important that the regulations be adhered to in respect of the prohibited practices piece. The regulation is designed to ensure that illegal and harmful content - there is no question that it is harmful content - is more likely to be identified, removed and militated against. New rules to address the challenge of AI have been adopted recently and will come into force on 2 August. The Government favours this European-wide approach to the digital services, which will make it more straightforward for serve providers to comply and regulators to oversee. Digital services are provided across borders and our response should be the same. Along with supervising and enforcing regulation, raising awareness is another tool to combat harmful content online. Coimisiún na Meán is working in this area.
I will take a moment to thank Hotline, which does incredible work in this area, and An Garda Síochána. I appeal to members of the public who find harmful content online to make a complaint to Coimisiún na Meán, Hotline, An Garda Síochána and, more importantly of course, to the platforms themselves to remove the content immediately.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-15