Ireland will not press ahead with new age limits for social media until a policy is agreed at EU level.
It comes after France moved forward with its own plans to ban social media for children under the age of 15.
Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan had previously suggested he had received “legal advice” that suggested Ireland could not set an age limit on its own without facing court challenges and that there were “limitations” on what it could do under the European-wide Digital Services Act.
Fellow EU member state France this week passed a Bill that would ban social media use for children under the age of 15.
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Asked why Ireland was not pursuing a similar policy, a spokeswoman for the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport said “Minister O’Donovan believes that any decision would be better taken by the EU and EU member states together.
“However, across the European Union there are differing views on whether there should be an age of digital majority at all, and if there were such an age, what age it should be, and whether it should be an outright ban or a ban subject to parental consent,” the spokeswoman said.
French MPs passed the Bill by a vote of 130 to 21 this week.
It will now go to the senate, France’s upper house, before it could become law. Legislators hope the ban will come into force before the new school year begins in the autumn.
The ban will include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
Ireland is about to carry out a trial of a new app, called a digital wallet, which could be used to set age limits for social media. It is understood that social networks, many of which are based in Dublin, have been supportive of the digital ID – which would be linked to a person’s PPS number.
Mr O’Donovan has asked social networks to participate in the trial. A spokeswoman for the department said it was “happy with the progress so far”.
Both the Department of Communications and the Department of Enterprise, which is responsible for Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy, said Ireland will use its upcoming presidency of the Council of the European Union to advocate for a ban on “deepfakes”, which are AI-generated images that may be illegal under image-based abuse or child sex-abuse laws.
