Ireland's major Internet service providers yesterday joined forces to start a major crackdown on child pornography on the Internet.
The new hotline operated by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (ISPAI) will accept reports of pornographic material featuring children found on the Internet.
In the case of material originating in Ireland, the hotline director will alert the specific service provider to halt its dissemination, and in certain circumstances details of the website owner will be forwarded to the Garda. A protocol for the passing on of such information is being finalised with the Garda.
For child pornography originating abroad, details will be exchanged with other national hotline services. The Irish service is part of the IN-Hope network of eight hotlines in five European countries, which also has affiliate members in Australia and the US.
It is unclear how much Internet child pornography originates in Ireland. However, it is believed that none of the six cases of computer child pornography currently being prosecuted involves material of Irish origin.
IN-Hope's president, Ms Ruth Dixon, who also runs the British Internet Watch Foundation, said just 5 per cent of the 8,000 complaints the service had received related to UK-based websites. The single greatest sources of child pornography on the Internet originated in Russia and Japan.
Ms Dixon said information they had passed to police authorities had resulted in prosecutions in Germany, Switzerland and the UK.
Some of the greatest dangers posed by the Internet related to chat rooms, where children could be befriended by adults pretending to be children, according to Mr Nigel Williams, of the British charity Childnet. The only way to protect children from these dangers was through greater awareness among parents and increased supervision.
Inaugurating the hotline, the Minister for Justice and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, said he was satisfied that the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act introduced last year provided a comprehensive legal basis to pursue and enforce child pornography activities on the Internet.
An Internet advisory board would be established shortly to oversee the implementation of the self-regulation system, the Minister said. Its duties would include reviewing the progress of the new hotline service and reporting to Government and industry on this, as well as contributing to the development of standards.
The hotline can be contacted at www.hotline.ie, by e-mail at report@hotline.ie, by phoning 1890 610 710, or by faxing 1890 520 720. Reports can also be mailed to www.hotline, 26 Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4.