For Ireland to introduce such a ban, Mr Harris said there needs to be a form of age-verification introduced, confirming culture minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan would bring the plan to Cabinet next month.<\/p>\n
The Government previously signalled the system would see age-verification introduced for certain websites, where it would be checked against an individual\u2019s Personal Public Service Number (PPSN).<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said British prime minister Keir Starmer had shown \u201creal leadership\u201d on banning social media for young people, describing the move as positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the social experimentation of the minds of our young people is real, it’s worrying. I think it’s potentially the mental health and wellbeing challenge of our time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said it was the Government\u2019s preference to act at an EU level, saying he hoped progress could be made during Ireland\u2019s presidency of the EU Council, which begins in July.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most impactful thing we can see is the EU moving quickly, but if it doesn\u2019t, Ireland has the right of its own domestic legislation to act,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin said he had spoken with Ireland\u2019s EU commissioner, Michael McGrath, who indicated that active efforts are under way within the European Commission to protect young people from the harms of social media.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin said this was \u201cpotentially\u201d moving in the same direction as measures being taken by the UK government.<\/p>\n
He said there is a growing groundswell among national governments that more needs to be done to protect young people, adding that the precise mechanisms of a ban on social media for under-16s still need to be worked out.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin said it was like other areas where the Government has intervened to protect people, citing interventions on restricting alcohol and tobacco.<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial media is the public health issue of our time,” said Mr Martin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Ireland to introduce such a ban, Mr Harris said there needs to be a form of age-verification…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,58],"class_list":["post-500633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}