Protection of Children (Online Age Verification) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-08
============================================================

Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel

There has been a lot of discussion recently about how best to protect our young people, especially our under-18s, from certain social media sites and pornography. The statistics from Rape Crisis Ireland are very concerning when they talk about the rise of online misogyny and what they are calling the "manosphere". It is an international network of influencers promoting male supremacy and anti-feminist ideologies. That is connected closely to multinational corporations, which are only interested in making profit, have a total disregard for harm and have recommender algorithms to spread unsuitable content to everybody, particularly children, without caring about the harm it causes.
There was research carried out recently by Professor Debbie Ging. She found that within 23 minutes of being created, fake teenage male accounts were served with misogynistic content without seeking it. That is scary. Young men are being targeted by some of these providers with unsuitable online content. Women's Aid did a survey called Evolving Manhood and found that two-in-five Irish men hold traditionalist views on gender but that rises to 67% among young men. This surveyed those aged 18 to 29 but I imagine it also affects young lads in their teenage years.
This emphasises the importance of education by parents and guardians because they have a huge role to talk to their young people and explain to them what a healthy relationship is and what is certainly not healthy. This should also happen in an age-appropriate way in our schooling system and going into third level as well. We have done quite a bit of work on this issue in higher education institutions too and sexual violence can be quite prevalent among a cohort there as well.
We all want to do anything we can to protect our children and stop them accessing pornography. I am a little concerned about some of the detail within the Bill. One part states:
Data that is collected and retained for the purpose of compliance with age verification requirements provided for under this Act shall be securely stored for a period of 5 years.
I am concerned about having that much private information in one place. About two months ago, the EU age verification app was launched and it was hacked within two minutes. It was not safe. I am concerned about that. The Bill also states:
The Minister shall prescribe a class of documents, or a combination of classes of documents, that is adequate to verify the age of each website user and which may be accepted for the purposes of fulfilling the age verification required under this section.
I am not sure what documents can be used and why. Again, I am wary of what happened in relation to the public services card, where a huge fine was served for breaches of privacy rules relating to the use of facial recognition in the registration processes. There was a fine of €550,000 in that case. There are a few things there that may need further work and clarification.
We do have our own legislation. We have the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 which established the new media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, and put in place an online safety code. Technology is moving so fast that legislation has to keep moving as fast as well. I know the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill is going through the Seanad at the moment. All of that is welcome but we need to make sure that all of these checks and balances are robust and ensure the proper age verification systems are put in place.
I commend the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport on its recent report. I know it had much engagement with stakeholders. The committee on children was also doing work around keeping children safe online. It is important that one of the first recommendations in the report of the committee is to "require platforms to disable recommender algorithms entirely for children and by default for people over 18". We need to hold the media companies responsible for what they are doing. As Senator Rabbitte said, we need to hold the phone companies responsible as well. We are letting them off the hook. We need to have our regulations in place and we need to have the proper age verification but these companies need to take responsibility for the damage they are doing.
Another recommendation in the report is to "fully incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into Irish law." That is really important, not just in this context but across many different Departments in relation to child law. We need to strengthen our laws that protect children and provide them with the supports they need in life. It also recommends we enhance Coimisiún na Meán’s investigative powers. That is really important too. We need to use all of the tools we have to ensure we keep our children safe.
The definition of pornographic content here may need to be tightened a little bit because some of it could apply to films with sexual activity or music videos and so on that are not pornographic but which do include sexual activity. Just because there is sexual activity in a music video or something on Netflix does not mean it is pornographic. We need to be able to distinguish these forms of content in the context of age verification. I fully support removing access to pornography for anyone under 18 years of age. It would be an incredible thing to achieve and it is really important. I hope this Bill can lead to doing that. Nobody would oppose anything that is going to protect our children.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:10+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-08