Protection of Children (Online Age Verification) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-08
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Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal

This Bill is clearly aligned with that objective, as it seeks to ensure that children do not access pornographic, adult-only material by requiring online services to first verify that a person is over the age of 18. For this reason, the Government does not oppose the Bill. However, there are practical, legal and technical issues with the Bill's provisions. It also does not take account of commitments in the national digital and AI strategy published by the Government in February of this year.
Regulations are already in place to protect minors online, including specific provisions to prevent children from accessing adult-only content such as pornography. Those requirements are in both EU and national laws. Some of the provisions in today's Bill are inconsistent with those existing regulations. The EU Digital Services Act, known as the DSA, obliges providers of online platforms that are accessible to minors to put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security of minors on their services. The DSA also imposes additional obligations on the very large platforms to assess their services for risks to minors and implement mitigation such as age verification. The category of very large online platforms includes several of the platforms that carry pornography. Last March, the European Commission issued preliminary findings to the effect that four providers of pornography are not effectively meeting these obligations to prevent minors gaining access.
Alongside the Digital Services Act is the online safety code, which is overseen by Coimisiún na Meán. It gives further effect to the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 and to the EU audiovisual media services directive. The code came into full force in July 2025 and it obliges designated video-sharing platform services to take steps to reduce the availability of harmful content online and address access to age-inappropriate content. It mandates providers that carry pornography to use robust age-assurance measures to prevent children under the age of 18 from getting access to that adult-only material. These regulations have been designed to be effective and meaningful. For example, failure to comply with the online safety code can lead to fines of up to €20 million or 10% of relevant turnover. These are larger fines than those in the Bill. Moreover, continued non-compliance with the online safety code can lead to criminal sanctions for senior management, which is similar to the Bill.
The Digital Services Act has a coherent oversight network comprising the European Commission and the digital services co-ordinators in each member state. This network ensures that supervision and enforcement is conducted on a pan-European basis and addresses the fact that digital services are provided across borders. Coimisiún na Meán is the digital services co-ordinator in Ireland. The Bill does not give an coimisiún any role, which is a practical gap that undermines both the remit of an coimisiún and the effectiveness of the Bill's provisions.
The Digital Services Act is also a maximum-harmonisation regulation, which gives the advantage of providing a single rule book. This makes it more straightforward for platforms to comply and more efficient for regulators to implement and enforce. A consequence of maximum harmonisation is that member states are precluded from introducing national measures that add obligations to the Digital Services Act. The Bill would be at odds with that rule. The offences in the Bill appear to conflict with certain liability exemptions in the Digital Services Act. The regulation provides that hosting services are not liable for illegal content made available by a user as long as the hosting service does not have knowledge of the illegal content and, once it becomes aware, it works expeditiously to remove or disable it. On the contrary, the Bill could make hosting services responsible for content they may not know of.
Another concern with the Bill is the method it proposes for age verification. It provides that online services providers should require documents or credit card information to confirm whether a person is over 18 or not. While the type of documents that can be used would a matter for the Minister for justice to determine, it seems more than likely that they would be State-issued documents, such as a driver's licence or passport. These documents contain a lot of personal data, often including biometric data. Credit cards also reveal a lot more than just a person's age, for example, their home address. Typically, this kind of data is considered sensitive and must be treated with care. The collection of all this personal data is disproportionate to the misuse the Bill is trying to address. It should be sufficient for a service provider to know if a person seeking access to its services is over 18 or not. For example, they do not need to know how much over 18 the person is, so they do not need a date of birth.
We must also take into account guidelines on the protection of minors issued by the European Commission last July. They stress the importance of age verification tools that are proportionate and respect the privacy of the user. They speak of age verification as being as non-intrusive as possible. They emphasise that age verification should not be an additional means for providers to identify, locate, profile or track natural persons. The extent of the data and the processing set out in the Bill do not meet these requirements. The Bill also provides that personal data shall be stored for five years. This, too, is contrary to the European Commission guidelines on protection of minors. Furthermore, five years is too long. The data provisions also raise significant concerns when it comes to compatibility with the general data protection regulation, GDPR. The Bill is problematic with respect to data minimisation principles, the proposed retention periods, and the lack of clarity regarding data controllers and joint controllership arrangements. Accordingly, the age verification method in the Bill runs the risk of cutting across EU guidelines and introducing a solution that is not compliant with GDPR.
Finally, the Bill does not take account of the Government’s recent national digital and AI strategy which commits the Government to delivering an age-verification solution. This will differ from the solution in the Bill as it will protect users’ rights, including privacy and reveal only essential information to platforms. At the same time, it will enhance online safety by providing accurate and robust information on age. My Department is working with the Office of the Government’s Chief Information Officer to develop this age-verification tool, and to make it available as part of the digital wallet. The tool will be in full compliance with a blueprint published by the European Commission last year and will work in a zero-knowledge capacity, only confirming to a platform whether the user is over 18. No other information, such as date of birth, will be provided to the platform or stored.
I share Senator Mullen's and many of the speakers objective of protecting children from harmful content online. Therefore, the Government is not opposing the Bill. However, the Government has concerns with the approach and content of this Bill. It raises issues that point to it being incompatible with existing regulation of both online safety and data protection. Moreover, existing online safety regulation already restricts access by children to pornography and provides for age assurance measures to be in place.
An age verification solution that is less invasive than the one in the Bill is in development. This will further support the implementation of those rules while still respecting the privacy of all users.
I again thank Senator Mullen for his genuine work and effort in bringing this Bill forward and for shining a light on this massively important issue that we must collectively address in order to ensure that we protect young people. The latter is an objective the Government shares with him. In terms of developing the tools to make sure we can do that, we look forward to working and collaborating with him and everyone else in the Seanad and the wider Oireachtas.
The Government thanks the Senator for his work and for bringing the Bill forward. I am not opposing the Bill in light of the shared objective, but I have outlined the issues that need to be addressed from the Government's point of view in order that we can move forward and ensure an outcome that will achieve the very important objective of protecting young people from the very harmful online material they can often be exposed to, especially pornographic material. I thank Senator Mullen and the other Seanadóirí.

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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