Sir, – The controversy over TikTok’s refusal to appear before the Oireachtas media committee misses the point.
It’s not the job of the committee to allow its chairman, Alan Kelly, to present himself as the man who will take on the social media companies. That is the job of the relevant minister and the Government as a whole.
The committee’s job is to hold the Government to account. Is the Government doing enough, or doing the right things (including putting legal requirements on social media companies to prevent harmful material being posted)?
If the Minister’s answers aren’t adequate, then the Oireachtas committee can play a valuable role in forcing a more appropriate solution.
RM Block
Instead, the committee seems intent on playing to the gallery of public outrage when it should be concentrating on putting pressure on the Government – the only body that can bring in the legal restraints to force social media companies’ compliance with the standards and practice to solve this problem. – Yours, etc,
EOIN Ó MURCHÚ,
Cluain Dolcáin,
Baile Átha Cliath 22.
Calling the wrong people before the Oireachtas
Sir, – In comments published by your newspaper, Alan Kelly (affectionately known to some by his moniker, AK-47) called TikTok’s refusal to appear before the media committee as a “slap in the face to the Irish public”.
I have heard no such calls to bring the Minister for Children in front of a committee, nor have there been calls for Tusla to appear before a committee after it was revealed that one of the youths in the M9 crash was in its care. Why not call the Minister for Public Expenditure before a committee for the department’s chronic underfunding of community resources? A case could also be made for calling in the Minister for Justice, whose response to any crisis is to make arbitrary new laws instead of enforcing existing ones.
It seems both Government and opposition are willing to scapegoat a social media company for its own failures, and in doing so fail to name the real issue: austerity.
So, before Kelly points fingers at TikTok’s responsibility and duty, he would be better placed to start looking within the House for the bogeyman. – Yours, etc,
ALANNAH UÍ GEARGÁIN,
Mulhuddart,
Dublin 15.
