The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Eamonn Barnes, has agreed to act as chairman of a new board which will consider ways to control the illegal and harmful use of the Inter net. This arises from concerns about the proliferation of sites offering services such as child pornography on the Internet.
The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, will nominate the members of the advisory board later this month. They will be drawn from the industry itself, Internet users, his Department, the Garda Siochana, the legal profession, academics working in the area, the media and people with experience of film censorship.
This follows recommendations from a working group on the illegal and harmful use of the Inter net, which reported last year. This group recommended the setting up of a hotline for the reporting of instances of illegal and harmful use of the net, which has been set up at www.hotline.ie
The report also recommended setting up an advisory group to monitor the use of the hotline and recommends action as a result of the complaints it receives. It would also have a broader remit with regard to the abuse of the Internet in general.
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform sees the involvement of the industry as crucial to the success of the advisory board, which will operate on the basis of self-regulation.
According to a departmental advisory document, the board would be responsible for the hotline, for viable and transparent procedures for processing complaints, for co-ordination between the various players in the area, for liaison with comparable international bodies, for the identification and prioritisation of appropriate research and for monitoring self-regulation and reporting to Government.
It suggests that all those involved in providing Internet services should be affiliated to a representative organisation, which should be represented on the advisory board. It acknowledges that Internet users have no ready forum at present, and suggests that they could be represented through consumer associations.
It also stresses the need for representation of the education and child-protection sectors. To ensure that complaints made to the hotline are incorporated into the work of the board, it urges that the director of this body be a member of the board and seek its advice on policy matters.
The Department's proposals provide for the co-option on to the board of temporary members who have a significant contribution to make on specific issues. Examples would include specialists from industry and the public sector, and from other jurisdictions. It envisages the co-option of an expert in the area of media regulation at an appropriate time.
The document stresses the need to be flexible in the context of the ever-changing environment represented by this area, and says the group should have the freedom and capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.