Ken O'Flynn

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How long do I have?

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I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this Bill to the House. It is an important, detailed and well put together Bill. The senior Minister referred quite heavily in his speech to Coco's Law. More than 12 months ago, I wrote to the Minister about expanding Coco's Law on behalf of a young gentleman who lost his life in the River Lee in Cork - he was 33 years old - Luke Hyde. I asked him to bring in an addition, known as Luke's Law. This young man drowned in the River Lee while hundreds of people videoed him in difficulty. They videoed the final moments of his life. On three occasions, I have written to the Minister of State's Department and to the senior Minister, requesting he meet the Hyde family. I have received an acknowledgement that my letter was received. I have never received an appointment or a possible opening for him to meet and talk to this family. This heartbroken mother still sees images of her child occasionally arrive on TikTok. She opens her phone, Facebook or whatever and sees images of Luke in his final moments of distress. No one is willing to talk about that. I have asked the Minister of State and the Minister to bring in a Luke's Law to address that situation. It ties in a lot with the things being discussed tonight, nudification and the atrocities that are happening in what is the digital wild west, without a doubt, to women and particularly to children. Paedophile rings have become incredibly sophisticated. That is the reality. They have embraced technology far more than most of us ever have. They are now scanning the globe, generating these types of images and sharing them on various platforms on the dark web, on Telegram and on various other communication networks and they have become very sophisticated. The problem is that we are not able to catch up. For some reason, criminal activity and those who are generating money from this and those involved in gratification from looking at young children are far more sophisticated and are running rings around the Irish Government, European governments and the rest. I do not know whether this legislation will make much difference. I say that because we are dealing with people in Singapore, China and Taiwan and groups in Silicon Valley. How far does it span? The entire world has to be working on this. The entire networks have to be working on it. Deputy O'Donoghue made a valid point about branding AI images. The other thing we have to address - penalising people is mentioned in the legislation and bringing them-----

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