I have no doubt the Government's age verification system proposals are well-intentioned but we in the Social Democrats have major concerns over this. It is not working in the jurisdictions where it is currently running, it raises major privacy and security concerns, it interferes with the rights of children and young people to engage in online life and participation in society more broadly and it leaves behind the root cause of the issues that exist in the online space. Why is the Government pursuing this when we know its efforts would be better spent on dealing with toxic algorithms and legislating for platforms as publishers? One of the Taoiseach's colleagues, Deputy Malcolm Byrne, agreed with me this morning on radio that this is a problematic initiative and he really failed to give his support to what seems to be Government policy now. This is a reasoned contribution. Earlier the Taoiseach said we are too quick to rush to criticism but that is not the case. I appreciate it is well-intentioned and that there is a place for classification but this is not going to work. We need better solutions.

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But it is distracting from what we need.

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We need to fix the online space.

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