Tech firms would be “foolhardy” to push back on Government plans to tighten up online safety for children, Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan has said.
Mr O’Donovan is to brief Cabinet on plans to introduce a pilot programme of a “digital wallet” to verify the age of social media users, with plans to legislate for its more widespread deployment next year.
However, Ministers are also expected to be told that tech firms are likely to have a hostile view to other measures, such as strengthening laws on executive liability for online safety failings.
It is understood Mr O’Donovan’s department sought legal advice on strengthening existing legislation in this area, which legal experts say is difficult to successfully prosecute.
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Speaking before Cabinet on Tuesday, Mr O’Donovan said he had not received pushback on online safety measures from tech firms yet.
“I think it would be quite foolhardy for anybody to push back in any way against any mechanism that any sovereign state would bring in to protect a child or a vulnerable adult online.”
“I think tech companies could have done an awful lot of this themselves over the last number of years, they decided not to, they’ve left it to sovereign governments and the European Union to do it, we’ve been left with no other choice,” he said.
“If there are tech companies that want to push back against protecting children online, I’d love to hear it.”
Mr O’Donovan said that if tech firms had made improvements in the area in the last number of years, there would probably be no need for governments to act, but that they had chosen not to.
“They chose to allow a situation where everybody and anybody could wind up on a site that they wanted to – and in the meantime make tens of billions of euros,” he said.
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Mr O’Donovan said an Australian-style ban on social media use for the under 16s was being held “in reserve” for the time being, adding it was “far more difficult” to deploy such measures as an EU member state, and that he would prefer if the union moved in unison in the area.
Separately, Tánaiste Simon Harris indicated that the Government expects to receive formal legal advice on legislation banning trade with illegally occupied Palestinian territories in the coming days.
The Attorney General has been asked to provide advice on the inclusion of services in draft Government legislation, which would expand the scope of the law significantly beyond a limited trade in goods with the territories. Ireland has been severely criticised by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States over the legislation, which the Coalition has pledged to progress.
Separately, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said the Government has concerns about some of the commentary about Europe emanating from the US following the launch of the Trump administration’s national security strategy at the weekend.
The strategy warned that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” as a result of migration and EU integration and that the US should “cultivate resistance” in Europe due to its trajectory.
“There’s a broad range of issues there but we would have concerns about some of the commentary in respect of Europe in terms of the nature of the commentary in that security assessment, but it’s not clear yet how representative that is of the broad view within the US administration,” Mr Martin said on his arrival to Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.
