Coimisiún na Meán

I mean, this does not come as news to you, does it?

And in the last all, we put in place the legislative system that's created Commission the Man, that has created this ability for online safety.

And there were

confidence issues raised by the committee chair, Alan Kelly, in Commission the Man today.

Yeah.

And I think ultimately you go along with that.

Look, I think absolutely.

The scale of the impact of the online space is more apparent every single day.

in association with Air.

We begin, though, with that story that Coimisiún na Meán has opened its first formal investigation under Ireland's Online Safety Code.

This is the code that came into effect on July 2025, and it relates to the responsibilities pertaining particularly to large social media platforms.

The thinking is that there may be evidence that X has not been delivering what it should in terms of the implementation of age assurance mechanisms and parental controls.

Oh, is this person seem to be associating with a lot of other adults or children? Also parental controls, but the parental controls are buried five layers deep, and the parents can't find them.

A- and there's just like a lot of different issues, as, as you said, that are, that are going on at the same time.

Now, as I said, Coimisiún na Meán has launched its first investigation under the, uh, Online Safety Code.

What has been your assessment of regulatory action in the US and Europe since the changes in X and Twitter? Because presumably you have witnessed a shift in the behavior of the platform away from what you thought was right and proper.

So if you want to do court reporting now, uh, which is quite resource intensive, at least for the journalists, they have to be there all day and they may not get that many stories, and there's a lot of pressure to produce content and get it out there.

Uh, and so yeah, Coimisiún na Meán has come into that space and is offering very significant amounts of money.

But the concern is as, as, as you've hinted at there, that this might, by being dependent on a state body like Coimisiún na Meán, even if it is an independent state body, uh, it, like it leaves journalism vulnerable in its ability to report critically on the state or for example, Coimisiún na Meán.

You know, if they're-

Yeah

... and they're, I'm sure there are gonna be reasons and maybe there are currently reasons why journalists might want to be reporting critically on Coimisiún na Meán.

Uh, but the concern, which I think is totally legitimate, is that, well, if you're getting money from them, you're gonna be worried you might have the money now as part of your grant from them and it's, it's grant-based money.

But when you come, when it comes time to reapply for a grant, and that's how fun- the funding is organized-