Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2021-11-25
============================================================

Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

I want to raise the issue of bullying in schools. Sadly, it is a feature of school life that students, teachers and parents face despite the Trojan efforts of pastoral teams, management and teachers in schools to address the scourge of bullying. Social media giants have played a huge part in inciting hate speech and have provided a continuous and relentless vehicle to allow bullying to continue on faceless accounts. TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter have proven that self-regulation is no regulation.
As a Government, we are trying to introduce ground-breaking legislation to take charge of the platforms and ensure they operate differently here in Ireland, which would set a global precedent. Will the Tánaiste support the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, in bringing forward the online safety and media regulation Bill and ensure the 33 recommendations put forward by the Oireachtas joint committee are included, especially the individual complaint mechanisms and the take-down procedures, because every citizen in this country needs to be protected, particularly our young people?

---

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/2021-11-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-11-25