 Now, you believe that we need to have a discussion about the abuse of politicians on social media. Explain more. Well, I think everybody in Ireland and the whole island was extremely upset at the murder, the brutal murder and slaying of a young British woman Labour MP Jo Cox last week. And we saw very moving tributes to her yesterday across the party spectrum in the House of Commons. Now, before her murder, she was the subject of fairly serious attacks on social media, as many, many women and male politicians are. And while politicians, in a certain sense, by putting their name in a poster, you may say, ask first. And while everybody welcomes robust political debate, discussion and argument, there is a point at which social media can move from beyond the point of argument, democratic argument, reasonable argument, into the level of hate. Now, you have used Jo Cox as an example, and just to make sure that we're using her name in the right way. The person that murdered her, are we saying that he had made threats against her on social media? No, I don't know that at all. I just know in the coverage on the English media that she had been. But the point is, the people who are doing this on social media, very often they're the people who probably wouldn't lay a finger ever physically on anybody else. But they may indulge heavily in essentially what is hate speech on social media. And what I'm just saying is, if anything good has come out of this horrible event to a young mother, a wife, somebody very dedicated to all the different causes she campaigned for and her politics, then it should pause to give us thought that while the people who are doing this on social media, do they think about the consequences that other people who may be far less mentally stable may read into and absorb this hate mail? And does it mean that it then emboldens people, certain people to do stuff that they would never otherwise do? Now, let me say this as well, that this is very important in relation to our children and our grandchildren. Because we have had numerous episodes around the world of young teenagers, very vulnerable, conscious of their self-image, growing up, trying to make their way in the world, trying to make the best of their lives. And again, very difficult language used towards them on social media can have consequences that in some cases turn out to be very, very tragic. So what I'm saying is that social media has been wonderful for the world of communications, for expanding our horizons, our knowledge, but there are people using social media. But if you're going to go into controlling your deputy, how far do you go? What are you suggesting? Well, I think there's a number of things that can be done. First of all, the use of certain language, which is used particularly towards women. And by the way, in terms of politics, about 80% of this hate language is directed at women politicians and about 20% towards male politicians. So it cuts across the spectrum, but it's more towards women than towards men. Secondly, we have a situation where some social media companies are beginning in a small way to filter some of the language. But when you have extremely vile and degradating language used in particular towards women and then maybe used in a wider context by other people towards other people, my own view is that technology is advancing at a level which would allow an awful lot of these particular words to be actually edited out. But the reality is I could use an offensive word in social media and put two dots between two letters. That's not good enough. But the point I'm saying is that the message would still come across. No, no, no, no. That's not good enough. If you use, for instance, towards women, something like C-word and that's followed by three asterisks. Everyone who's reading that reads in their head what that word is. Look, people understand language. That's my point. So the whole word would have to be filtered out. And I'm saying there are words that are not acceptable in ordinary discourse. Remember, I am all in favor of robust argument, but I am absolutely opposed. And I think we in our society should think about it, that we shouldn't use hateful language on social media. Argument yes, discussion yes, disagreement yes. OK, but this is censorship to an extent. And I do understand why you would call for this. But say, for instance, with my group of friends on social media, say I like to use that language but not in a degrading way towards someone. And I can't. I mean, is that... I'm suggesting certainly in relation to public social media, a lot of which is encountered by public figures. They could be journalists. They could be politicians. They could be people for a variety of reasons. In the media, people involved in entertainment and so on. I'm just saying that the IT technology is available to actually filter it. Now, I have a lot of sympathy for politicians. For everybody's health, particularly everybody's mental health, it should be filtered out. And I think it's a conversation we need in this society. But then what's happening is this you're legislating for the language people can use on the internet? I don't believe that it's particularly necessary to legislate, although some legislation may be desirable. I'm not particularly in favour of censorship. But when people use a medium which has the ability to do great damage to other people, well then to see it's regulated, to see it filtered in a way that removes some of the harm to me makes absolute sense. Now, I don't want to labour this point. But what I'm trying to... I'm not someone who has used bad language on social media. If an anonymous person with no followers on Twitter very wrongly wants to start up an account and hurl horrible abuse, they should be dealt with, of course. But then if I choose, just choose to in social media in my circle of people to use swear words, to use offensive language as some may see it, I'd be blocked from doing that because anonymous down the country is using that language in an offensive way against someone. How can that be... Well, can I just say this to you, Greg? And I understand what you're saying is that in a private discussion with your friends at the end of the night in a pub say, people might throw language around a bit and so late at night or something like that, people might throw language around a bit. But we have to think about the consequences for our broader society and particularly you have to think of the example that people like young teenagers absorb that social media is open-seasoned in addition to anything. Can I just give you an example? In the last door, two of my colleagues in the door, Senator Lorraine Higgins and Senator Maria Cahill were subject to the most vile abuse. But Maria Cahill herself made a great deal of strong accusations on social media as well so it's an implement that she used in her search for her justice. But the point is this... Would you censor that? Sorry, the point is this. There was absolutely vile language used towards two women parliamentarians. Now if people want to have a discussion, a political discussion, a political argument, a political disagreement with those two people or with any other two people then that is fine. That's what politics is about. It's about discussion and argument. But I'm saying that when very vile language is used, very degrading language particularly of women, I think it's time that as a society we pause for thought. I'm not asking you Greg, by the way, to agree with me. You're putting forward a point of view that I understand but I'm just saying that this has become so pervasive and destructive in parts of social media that it's not good for anybody and it's not good broadly for our society. We need to take hate language out of social media discourse. Yeah, but I'm not putting them across my point of view per se but I'm putting an opposing point of view. People would not like censorship and I just think once you start censoring a little bit then the floodgates are open next thing you know and people will feel that if politicians are calling for this they'll probably want to push it out a little bit further to say, well, you know... Well, unfortunately we have too many sad examples in this country of instances where this has happened and others that we do have to think of the impact of this kind of behaviour. And the message that it sounds particularly to younger people and to teenagers when they're very much vulnerable about either their image or who's friends with them or who's not friends with them. And they're the simple points that I'm making. I'm not somebody who favors censorship at all but I'm saying that social media has produced an awful lot of good in the world but this element of it is enough good and it's not good for the people who are doing this. But why not then make the companies the likes of Twitter, Facebook and so on more responsible for banning these accounts but rather than having it that everybody can't say F. Just let me say this. What I've suggested are two simple things. One is that words should be filtered out and as I said to you I don't believe words with three asterisks are an appropriate way of filtering out. In my view they should just be deleted and taken out. Secondly, in relation to people who do this on a repeat basis over a period of time well I think that the companies should seriously look at whether or not they want those people as their customers. What about pornography? To be honest I do have sympathy for politicians and people in high profile positions but you can go on to Twitter, go into the search box and literally search anything and unfiltered the most extreme pornography will pop up regardless of what your age. Is that not something really the politicians should be more focused on? That is very degrading. If you want that to be part of the conversation if that's your proposal Greg that is certainly something that can be part of the conversation but I am not in favor of hate language becoming a commonplace on social media and what happens then is that vulnerable people become caught up in it. The people who are doing it may be very mentally stable and self assured but other people reading it, absorbing it, becoming influenced by it may be very wrongly and badly influenced both in terms of themselves and what happens to other people. So what do you think will happen as it relates to the possibility of either being legislated for in some way or other or pressure being put on those that host these services to be as you would say more responsible in what they permit to be said on their platforms? Well I think there needs to be a general sense if you like of respect for the importance of argument of civil argument, of discussion, of disagreement of actually working together working by talking with, discussing with people how to resolve issues. I don't think the way to do that is to resort to the kind of behavior where essentially it's violence by another means in other words... Say I say to you... And I'm only saying this because of the complexities of it so say for instance I say to you something incredibly offensive using bad language and you want that filtered out but say for instance... If I could just conclude this bit of the argument but then I say to someone else a teenage boy or girl and fat shame them not using abusive language but using unfilterable language to make them feel bad about themselves and make them feel low and that could have as bad of an impact on them as calling someone a C or an F could So you can't just... We can't approach it through censorship can we? But can I give you another example? If you say that you want to rape a woman politician you want to see her rape you want to see her daughter's rape you want to see her family dad and so on is that acceptable? I don't think that's acceptable but there are a lot of people who might say oh that's just the give and take of politics it's not in my view the give and take of politics because we're entering a climate where it becomes easy to actually identify other people as an enemy and as they're an enemy that enemy is there to be destroyed not physically but verbally through social media I don't think that's what social media is for and I know a lot of people are very nervous about saying anything like this but I want to be very clear about saying this there was a conference last year a couple of months ago in Kerry in women in media and just picking up on your example that you were giving there about somebody's appearance one of the journalists there was saying that increasingly now there are people who are nervous about going on to particularly TV and similar broadcast media for fear that it's too much because their appearance is going to be taken apart and dissected now that's part of what politicians do so I'm not saying that in relation to politicians I'm just quoting what journalists were saying in relation to what's been happening where it's open season on social media maybe it's the climate we're in a few of politicians that make decisions to cut money in the area of mental health or in the area of elderly people or homelessness that actually genuinely we can show that it's killing people and where's the accountability there oh sorry Greg I'm also a politician who made decisions but actually saved the Irish social welfare system from going down the road of grief I'm very proud of that I would love to have had more money to be able to do more of it but in fact I was able to restore the Christmas bonus I was able to get a lot of people help with getting back to work admittedly not as many people in Donegal as I would have liked so I'm very proud of that and you used politics responsibility in your mind like I use social media responsibility and other people take a different view of that which they're absolutely entitled to take I'm not disputing that they're entitled to take a different view of it but I'm very sure in my own mind of having inherited literally a social welfare system but I'm not objecting to somebody criticizing me it's not criticizing people have lost their lives because of political decisions and you know you have good politicians and you've got politicians that have to make difficult decisions or even bad decisions and then by contrast in social media you've got people that use it responsibly and then you've got people that use it irresponsibly or make bad decisions so you don't use one brush for all but maybe then we're not talking about the average person who's on social media exactly you're not talking about the average person about a small minority of people who do not use social media in a way that's healthy or good and then you introduce censorship for all no I'm just going to repeat what I said Greg which is that we need as a society to have a conversation about this and how we go about getting the social media structure that actually supports people helps people, informs people helps people to enjoy life, to expand their lives not one which is destructive of people I'm just saying take the hate language out of it I'm all for discussion I've no difficulty with discussion but I'm very opposed I'm very concerned about hate language and hate imagery being imposed being used on social media and the damage that can inflict both on the people who are the recipients of it and most of all on the mindset of the people who are the purveyors and the writers and I fully agree with you and I'd love to see the general social media community round more on those that do this rather than re-tweeting and favouriting and liking and sharing these people should be I think as I said to you I don't have the last word on this at all I mean younger people are much more adept at social media it's more important in their lives they understand it better and accept that but all I'm saying is I think we just need to give the pause button a press and say right can we do this better in a way notwithstanding all the good that it does some people can become very damaged by it