Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 18 Dec 2020

Thank you very much, Carl Heerlach. Minister, you're very welcome to the House. This is the first time I think I've addressed you since your elevation, so great to see you here. I was proud to step aside and let Labour take the slot, the debt of thanks and gratitude that is due to Brendan Howland and the party, and yourself indeed, Senator Batcheck, for bringing this legislation through. It's been a long and arduous journey. I want to say to Jackie Fox, Coco didn't die in vain. The outlandish, horrendous torment and abuse and harassment she took from bullies online was not in vain. She has made the world a safer place, or at least this country a safer place. I met the family outside the gates, thanks to Deputy Howland. It was a harrowing meeting, so it was, to see what was done to that beautiful, beautiful child. She may have been 21, but she was a child. She was somebody's child. We have something terribly wrong going on in our society with respect to social media and the use of social media. The fact that one can register anonymously and throw out any abuse they feel like. And there is a misconception that it is scumbags that engage in this sort of thing. My personal experience, I asked a question in this house about the HPV vaccine. I asked the question because I knew nothing about it, and I called for a debate. And talking about online harassment and what it does, on one particular Saturday evening, I found my own mental health being challenged. And the people that were bullying me were not scumbags, they were registered general practitioners in medical practice. And I still have the photo shots, or the screen captures, of what they said to me online. One of them went as far as to diagnose me as somebody who needed mental treatment. And at that stage, I contacted them and said, you've gone too far. I know who you are. You've gone too far. And within three minutes, every tweet was gone. From medical practitioners. Now, if medical practitioners can behave like that, what can those who do not understand the damage they're doing? This bill is about the use of images, and the horrendous work that's done on young ladies. I understand, I was a teacher for 25 years, one of the worst things you can do online to a girl is not comment. They put an image up of themselves with a new dress or something, no comment. Nothing. That's one side of it. The other side of it, and I've got to speak to the young men of Ireland. What are you thinking of that you're asking young girls to take intimate photographs of themselves and send them to you? What the hell is that about? If you want to see some part of their anatomy, you can go and meet them. You don't need it to be sent to you online and then to have this great big stick to hold over their heads for the rest of their lives. I've seen this in schools. I've seen some of the carry-on that goes on. And really and truly, this has to stop. My first week as President of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, I had to travel to the northwest of this country, where two young girls had taken their own lives because of what was going on online. What sort of country have we? One of the things the principal said to me of that school the day I arrived, he said to me, Ger, I cannot understand what's going on in family homes. We were talking now about children in the age 13 to 15. He said, they're sent to bed at night at a particular time. Their parents will make sure that they've washed their teeth, put on their pyjamas, in some cases said their prayers before they go to bed. And then they will leave them with the most lethal instrument in the bed with them. And that instrument is their mobile phone. And they can either be the bully or the bullied. So, it's a societal issue. And this legislation is going to go a long, long way towards changing the society we live in. And I am really grateful to Brendan Howland for bringing this forward. He fought long and hard to bring it into both houses. And it will pass, and it will pass as Coco's Law. And it's not before time that we had a Coco's Law. But now we've got to go one stage further, Minister. And I would hope that you would engage in a national advertising campaign. So, as nobody is left unaware of exactly what this means, I would hope that my former colleagues in education would explain to children in schools, particularly in late national school and all of second level, that you do not have to provide images of yourself for anybody. Oh, if you loved me, you'd send me the photograph. You do not have to do that. And if you do do it, you leave yourself open to these blackguards. And I could use much stronger language here today if I wanted to. But you can leave yourself open to what they will do. There has to be penalties. And I'm glad to see that both yourself, Minister, Minister McEntee, and Brendan Howland saw that this was a dynamic bill. This is a bill that will have to change. You know, I'm in my 60s. I started communications with Morse code. Dots and dashes. It's not that long ago. Just ahead of the smoke signals. I moved from Morse code in high frequency through to very high frequency, through to mobile phones and through to the internet from where we are today. And in that short space of time, I have seen how communications has been used as a weapon. A weapon to pull people into line. There is one final point I'd like to make before I finish my time. And I know that this deals with online. But we must also look at bullying in the workplace, bullying in the classroom, and particularly bullying in the workplace. I'm particularly familiar with a former colleague who took his own life because he could take no more of it. And the bully is the guy you meet in the staff room or in the corridor who is the nicest possible person any of us ever met until they get in a room on their own with you. And they are the most heartless creatures. And if they're like that one-to-one, what are they going to be like online? A lot of the stuff that we've seen online has come from the play yard, has come from the school play yard. And we've got to move to stop it. So while this bill will go a long way with dealing with cyberbullying and the like, we need to come back and look at laws. I do know that the Offences Against the Person Act is one that can be used in bullying, but it's quite difficult to prove. Bullying is a one-on-one issue, usually. Right? And I remember a person telling me one time that if it was a schoolteacher, she said, if he calls me in once more, I'm going to close the door as I go in, bang my head as hard as I can off the wall and run out and say he hit me. Because it's the only evidence I'd ever have that I was actually being bullied. I'm not going to take any more time. I want to thank the Labour Party. Really good work. I want to thank the government for accepting the work of Brendan Howland. Thank you very much indeed. I want to thank the people who have to visit this one. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.