Ireland will not follow other countries and pass a law creating a social media ban for children in the short term, even as European Union member states advance their own plans for age limits.
Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan said he would bring forward online child safety measures “incrementally” and he talked down proposals being brought forward by other countries as laws that children could “potentially” get around.
France, Spain and Greece have recently announced plans to ban social media for children under the age of 15 or 16. Non-EU countries such as Australia and the UK have announced their own online age limits. Canada is also considering a similar proposal.
The Department of Communications told The Irish Times that Ireland as an EU member state “must be conscious of EU law on this issue”, including the Digital Service Act (DSA). The DSA is designed to “harmonise” EU digital policy. Ministers have been told the view of the Attorney General’s office is there is “no legal basis yet for an Irish-only ban”.
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O’Donovan has previously cited the “limitations” of EU law and “legal advice” made available to him, when asked about Ireland’s plans to ban social media for children under 16.
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He said some European countries had announced “similar but different approaches with regard to how they’re going to deal with this”.
“It’s regrettable that the European Commission haven’t dealt with this across the European Union,” he said. O’Donovan, who said he would prefer for the bloc to set social media age limits “in unison,” said it had been left to member states to set their own policy".
“I think there’s still an opportunity to do that, and we’ll be using our presidency [of the EU] in the second half of this year to try and focus the attention of the commission and other member states into the importance of protecting children online,” he said.
However, it is understood there is a view within the European Commission that the DSA is not a barrier to Ireland pressing ahead with its own measures.
O’Donovan indicated that if and when Ireland did move forward with a social media ban for children, it is likely it would set age limits at 15 or 16. He said Ireland “won’t deviate too much” from what other European countries were doing.
“But any decision with regards to what I will do, I will do it incrementally with Government and seek approval from Government with each step,” he said.
Asked about the upcoming French law, O’Donovan said some countries were trying to set age limits for social media through “age estimation” – which means social networks or third parties could use technology to estimate a user’s age.
“The issue with age estimation is that you can potentially get around it. It is, at the end of the day, an estimate of age,” O’Donovan said.
He said Ireland would be using “verifiable data”, if and when it set age limits for social media, through a new digital wallet, which had already been developed. O’Donovan said he hoped to have the age verification tool set up this year.
