Facebook vice president of public policy Joel Kaplan spoke before a meeting of the Irish parliamentary Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and the Environment on April 17 in Dublin.

The committee was addressing the use of social media in elections, and the potential influence of social media on future votes in Ireland, including the upcoming May referendum on abortion.

Kaplan, who was joined by other Facebook executives, told the committee that the company was sorry for its role in data use by third parties like Cambridge Analytica, which represented “a violation of trust.”

Kaplan also told the committee that the pilot of Facebook’s new advertisement transparency tool would be extended to Ireland ahead of the abortion referendum.

The platform has already seen numerous advertisements logged by groups such as the Transparent Referendum Initiative and Storyful. Credit: Oireachtas TV via Storyful