Danny Healy-Rae calls for laws to protect youngsters online

I'm glad to get the opportunity today, I want to thank Richard White Barrett for bringing this to our attention here today and I suppose we all agree that online safety for our youngsters is of paramount importance. Our youngsters are our future and we need to protect our future by protecting our youngsters. This is so important and it's so hard for young couples today now, rearing children and you know, to get them to crawl and to get them to walk and all the things that's before them but this is really hard for many parents to understand because like the deputy before me said, we didn't have to go through this or didn't know, we didn't have these problems that are being lauded on our young society now and I do agree that we need to bring in laws here to deal with these platforms that are in it for just to make money and fortunes for themselves on the backs of our children and connectivity is so important. I do believe that youngsters up to 16 years of age should have a mobile phone, maybe something like my own that is of no harm and that there's no ridiculous content or bad stuff like we know that's available at the present time. We do know that youngsters have and have been bullied and have committed suicide as a result. We know that and that's terrible and awful thing altogether that we got to know about in recent years and never understood that such a thing could happen. Like Deputy Dolan said, we as parents don't know what's going on in the rooms or behind the door where children are, we don't know what's going on and I think more parents do need to be educated and understand better because generally people out there are outraged with what's happening and the way some of these online platforms have people taken over completely and while they may know what's going on in the other end of the world and there's great value and educational things to be had from these platforms and from these iPhones and all that. I'm worried that the fact that youngsters are online, they know what's going on in the other side of the world but they don't know what's going on around them. They're forgetting to talk maybe to their parents or to their siblings or to their grandparents. We all benefited from those things and grew up in a normal kind of a way where everyone belonged and came forth rather than some of these things that are happening on the other side of the world. Online abuse is another thing that's terrible. I haven't suffered from that but I do know that other politicians and other people have suffered a lot from this anonymous kind of online abuse and where people can put up terrible things about families and create so much distress. It triggers suicide and triggers other problems and puts people down in a big way. We need to deal with that minister and whatever the government comes up with. And the government does need, this is very important because as I said at the start out children are our future. And I believe we need to keep this rubbish away from them until they're at least 16 or 17 years of age. But let them have connectivity, have the honorary phone or if they can be taken off of the iPhones or whatever. But we need to leave them to have connectivity to contact their friends, to contact their parents or whatever. If they need assistance we need to maintain that. But we have to bring forward a Bill Minister to deal properly with this and we all need to support it. You're over time. All right.