Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important legislation. Sinn Féin does not oppose this Bill but we do have an issue with how it is being rammed through the Dáil without any pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. We will table amendments to copper-fasten the legislation to ensure that the collection of levies does not extend beyond funding the regulatory work of Coimisiún na Meán and the CCPC.

This is a short technical Bill which extends Coimisiún na Meán's and the Competition and COCC's levy-raising powers to fund new enforcement functions under the Digital Services Act and the terrorist content online regulation. The Digital Services Act, which passed through both Houses this January, brought significant changes to Irish law and to the online space. The Digital Services Act and the EU Digital Services Act seek to regulate very large online platforms and provide a more equitable online environment and address illegal and harmful content. It is hoped that it will also rein in the powers of big tech and give Internet users a bit more control over their digital lives. However, to deliver on these aims, it is important that Coimisiún na Meán and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission can fund their regulatory work. This is where the Bill fits in.

Given the rise in disinformation and harmful content on social media and various online platforms, it is essential that these regulatory bodies can deliver on their remit. We all enjoy great advantages from using online platforms and the ability to have so much information right there at our fingertips. However, given the power of platforms, intermediary service providers and hosting services, it is important that we have regulation and well-funded regulatory bodies. Having one without the other would be ineffectual in the extreme. The Bill provides the legislative basis to: extend Coimisiún na Meán's levy-raising powers and introduce levy-raising powers for the CCPC to those service providers that are in scope of the Digital Services Act; extend the levy-raising powers to providers within the scope of the terrorist content online regulation for which Coimisiún na Meán has also been designated as a competent authority; enable Coimisiún na Meán and the CCPC to agree arrangements so that one authority can collect levy funding on behalf of the other to minimise the administrative burden on platforms supervised by both authorities.

The crux of the Bill is to allow Coimisiún na Meán to be funded by levies. Coimisiún na Meán has introduced levies for video-sharing platforms and video-on-demand providers and for broadcasters.

This legislation extends the ability to collect levies from intermediary services and hosting services to fund the work relevant to the Digital Services Act, Coimisiún na Meán and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. It is important to state what these services are. Intermediary service providers are online services which consist of either a mere conduit service, a caching service or a hosting service. Examples include online search engines, wireless local area networks, cloud infrastructure services or content delivery networks. Hosting services are intermediary service providers that store information at the request of the service user. Examples include cloud services and services enabling the sharing of information and content online including file storage and sharing.

The legislation also provides for Coimisiún na Meán to impose a levy on providers of online platforms that allow consumers to conclude distance contracts. This is part of the plan to make Coimisiún na Meán fully funded by levies for its regulatory activities and not dependent on the Exchequer. Sinn Féin is not opposed to this Bill, and it sees the merit in ensuring that Coimisiún na Meán can fund its own work. We are frustrated that this Bill bypassed pre-legislative scrutiny in the enterprise, trade and employment committee. This is because Coimisiún na Meán sits under the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, and matters relating to the commission and some of the core legislation being amended in this Bill are in the Broadcasting Act, which again falls under the Minister for media. As I said, we support the idea of Coimisiún na Meán and the CCPC being able to fund their regulatory work, but that is where this legislation must stop. It cannot be used as a back door to funding beyond that, and we will bring forward amendments to copperfasten this.

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