Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence
Dail Éireann — 2023-02-16
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Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

Children at Risk Ireland, CARI, is a specialist professional organisation that deals with children who have been sexually abused. It found that in the past two years there has been a 44% increase in the number of cases of sexual abuse perpetrated on children by children. There is a massive problem with the consumption of hardcore pornography among children. I spoke to a parent at Christmas who looked at a screen a child was using. There were two searches: one was for Santa Claus and the other was for explicit, hardcore pornography. That is happening right across the country at very young ages at the moment. We have seen cases such as that of Anna Kriégel where, shockingly, there was a dark history of children consuming very explicit material. It is distorting young children's understanding of what is healthy in relationships. In France, they are now banning children consuming this material. They are saying that if people want to consume this material, they must prove their age. I have produced a Bill that does exactly the same here: it puts pressure on the Internet service providers to make sure that they know the age of the people consuming this material so that children do not consume it. We can stop this, and that could help in trying to resolve this very serious issue.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-02-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:35+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-02-16