Does leaving a message on a minister’s fb wall reminding him of his pre election promises and how he has failed miserably implementing them constitute abuse ? I bet under any law passed by this government will make that illegal.

I have to say that I agree with the point about bullying being the problem to address not the means to bully.
However when a bully can access a child in their own home it does add a new dimension.
Parents need to monitor their children on line and take action just like they would for any other form of bullying.

Bullying never finished at 4pm John. You were just off the clock and it wasn’t your problem anymore.

I have commented a couple of times about this minister and vigil to control social media. Like most decent people i detest any form of bullying or harassment , but with this minister sense something more sinister. I only hope that they will be gone before they infringe our rights to freedom of speech

Fine Gael John O’Mahony … saying that as a former teacher it was easier when bullying could be seen in the schoolyard, whereas now “it doesn’t finish at four o’clock”.

I can’t see why they’re trying to deal with online bullying when bullying still goes on in a schoolyard and still remains untackled. When I was younger, I could avoid Bebo/Facebook, but I couldn’t avoid the schoolyard.

All aboard the bandwagon…

Glad to see some tds chiming in with some sense.. That fidelma one was cringing to watch.. As a friend of mine put it it was like watching cavemen trying to discuss a combustion engine

How come a student who either joked or mispelled TD Rabbits name as Rabbit, is arrested yet you have TD Hogan referring to Sunday Independent and another newspaper as “knackers” ? Where is the law in this? Thats a sick comment to make Mr Hogan, you should be arrested and fined for making such a sick comment.

bullying will always exist and as adults we take it with a pinch of salt, but kids and teens as we know do get upset, i have my daughters passwords and check every so often what is going on,, i pay for pc so its up to me as a mother and protector to make sure all is ok,, i don’t think they can say Facebook and twitter as their is the phones, with messaging and groups bullying,, our government don’t like what is being said about them this is just personnel, and if you want to be in the public eye, make money from the public ie your wages and pensions,, will grow up and take it,, your a public figure,, and when you do something good its also commented on,, but with austerity of course going to be loads of biatching,, think our boys need to grow a pair and stop acting like twits,,, leech away as that is what your good at,, and breaking the working people labor will never answer for as this is their last term in office,, so pat,, adios

This is censorship and leads down a dark road towards State control of the what we say , no thanks I have no desire for a police state

Another non issue being given way too much time. Leaving party politics at the door, the comment made by the FF TD hits the nail on the head, bullying is bullying regardless of the channel it goes through. There is already enough legislation in place to deal with these issues.

There’s a decent chance Ireland is on the cusp of a meltdown.

There’s very little left for the people once freedom of speech is gone. The pro-government bile is hitting us from all angles of the media. At least on social networks like Twitter, we are able to cut out the crap and get a variety of outside, honest information. Not just the garbage RTÉ and the O’Brien empire feed us on a daily basis.

The Arab Spring all started with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia. We nearly had a self-immolation at the Dáil today. Time is ticking and something will snap soon.

not only do they want to Tax the internet , they want to regulate it, killing any future innovation and controlling what you see and hear. the only weapon you have left against this is anonymity.

It is hypocritical of the politicians to talk about bullying being a problem when they and the civil service speak in threatening terms about new taxes.
Just watching that harridan from the Revenue Commissioners on TV and her whole speech was a series of threats – we will attach your earnings, seize money from your social welfare payments etc. And there is the planted story that her goons will use search warrants to search houses.
All of the other new charges attract similar threats
What is this but bullying?

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

They’d also want to be careful that they don’t chase all the cloud computing investment out of the country and stifle Irish start ups under layers of reactionary legislation too.

These companies are highly mobile.

Ireland had a very dark history when it comes to censorship and if we start making noises about censoring the Internet, I would really fear for the future of IT investments here.

They’d want to be very careful they don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

There’s also the issue that almost all of these sites are hosted outside the jurisdiction anyway and if Irish law were to become hostile to social media you can be sure that any that are based here would quickly move their hosting facilities somewhere with normal laws.

So, in reality all legislating might do is scare away investors while achieving absolutely nothing in terms of tackling cyber bullying!

I’d rather see money spent on support services for those impacted on by bullying than a legal wild goose chase.

If this goes through could An Post for hate mail??

Facebook (and pedo’s) must secretly be rubbing their hands with glee. They don’t like anonymity – to better help sell advertising and sell profile details on to marketing firms.

The only reason this bullying kicked off in recent years is because facebook encourages true identities and kids don’t know any better. And now many websites in recent years (including the journal.ie ) only let you comment with facebook or twitter accounts. The internet had been doing fine thank you before facebook came along as regards bullying – the impact of trolling is greatly lessened if it has less personal impact – by using an anonymous a/c.

Kids say stupid stuff to each other all the time, that will never change. It would be far better if all kids HAD to have anonymous accounts rather than real ones. Or that they were educated in having a separate anonymous FB a/c for interacting with other websites away from their close circle.

All of this trouble could be easily solved by facebook from a software / log-in point of view but they are unlikely to do so and the TD’s don’t really understand the technical issue of how Facebook profiles effect other websites.

Sort Facebook and how kids use it and you could easily solve the bulk of the problem.

Everybody on twitter should use there real name, address, phone number, bank account and sort code numbers, mother’s maiden name.

How is it that someone can post anonymously and when people post their opinions under their own name they are blocked from this site ?