Ireland’s electoral processes face growing digital threats that are outpacing its regulatory development, a new report by the Centre for Justice and Law Reform warns.
Titled Safeguarding Irish Election Integrity in the Era of Emerging Digital Threats, the report acknowledges the country’s regulatory response to emerging digital risks has improved in recent years. However, Ireland needs to broaden and deepen its approach to safeguarding against online misinformation, foreign interference and AI to keep pace with the evolving digital threats, the discussion paper advises.
Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of Irish democracy, but social media, algorithmic amplification, anonymous online activity and generative AI (GenAI) have changed the environment in which campaigns take place, according to the report’s authors. As a result, malicious actors now have new ways to shape public debate and undermine trust in democratic institutions. False information can now be created, distributed and amplified at unprecedented scale and speed, the paper says, while acknowledging that research showing disinformation directly decides elections remains limited. Nevertheless, it also cites growing evidence that disinformation deepens political polarisation and erodes confidence in public institutions, the media and democratic processes.
Recent elections across the European Union, including in Ireland, showed that domestic and foreign actors can exploit digital platforms to spread false narratives, attack candidates and challenge results. “Safeguarding election integrity will depend not only on effective regulation of online platforms, but also on strong institutions, informed citizens, trusted sources of information, and a coordinated whole-of-society response,” the report states.
Eight recommendations are made to safeguard Ireland’s election integrity from online attacks, while respecting fundamental rights and democratic values. They include one calling for the coordination and expansion of existing media literacy initiatives. The recommendation calls on the government to strengthen and expand media literacy programmes across the education system and wider society to improve the public’s ability to identify misinformation and disinformation and to evaluate online information critically. Building societal resilience remains one of the most effective long-term safeguards against online election interference.
Other recommendations include an expansion of the “trusted flag” system by Coimisiún na Meán, in cooperation with Oifig IS na hÉireann (AI Office of Ireland) under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). “The DSA represents a major shift in the regulation of online platforms by imposing obligations on very large online platforms and very large search engines to assess and mitigate risks to civic discourse and electoral processes,” the paper states.
It is also recommended that Coimisiún na Meán should work with An Coimisiún Toghcháin (The Electoral Commission) to set up a formal framework to engage platforms on political advertising, and encourage the return of transparency in this area where platforms have withdrawn it. Recommendation 3 calls on the government to review Part 5 of the Electoral Reform Act 2022 for consistency with the DSA and clarify the roles of the two Commissions.
There are also calls for the Department of the Taoiseach to lead a national partnership framework to spread accurate electoral information through fact-checkers, universities, public service media and civil society, and to also lead a permanent coordination mechanism, involving the National Cyber Security Centre, for information sharing and threat monitoring. A national framework for independent research and election monitoring, and for formal cooperation between the Standards in Public Office Commission and the digital regulators on online political advertising and campaign spending, are also recommended.
The paper concludes that technological change continues to outpace regulatory development, and that protecting elections will require strong institutions, informed citizens, trusted information sources and a whole-of-society response.
