Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)

I second the motion. I thank the Minister for coming to the House.

Images of children on the web being abused or in the act of abuse are real, plentiful and profoundly evil. They harm and destroy the children concerned for life. According to Interpol, 4% of these children are under two years, 20% are between three and six years, 45% are between seven and ten, and 30% are between 11 and 15 years. What is done to the child can never be erased, eradicated, washed away or made to vanish. The images of abuse are, therefore, cemented in the souls, hearts and minds of the children for all time. They will also be present on the Internet for all time. The children are captured, abused and caught in the abuse through a camera moving, through a camera still or through an image superimposed. Images of children are published and they are then defined for life by these. That is probably the most important point I am going to make.

These child-abusive pornographic images never go away and can never disappear unless we take action. They roam the world of the web like horrific evils. Even when the child depicted has grown up and tried all his or her life to find a route to another world where these gruesome abuse images do not exist, these images continue to roam and route their way to other screens, other screeners, other abusive sinners and other casual, informed or syndicated watchers.

Each time an image is viewed, a child is abused once again, with a new and defined force. Those who may witness or watch such images, whether by chance or deliberation, are witnessing crime scenes. They are also offenders and are aiding and abetting the repetition of the crime. We must do everything possible to stop the distribution of these images. The private, public and unconscionable abuse of children of three years of age and younger sometimes masquerades on the Internet as a kind of public entertainment. In the absence of legislation to stop this, the web will alter - it is already beginning to do so - the structure of our interests and the things about which we think. The web can also present awful images as being normal. Such images suggest a reality about and around children which allows those who look at them to believe that this is how children want to be perceived or viewed. Children have no power to stop this. I am reminded of a quote from Karl Marx, "As individuals express their life, so they are."

The images to which I refer are without boundaries and without dimension. What we are dealing with is what John Milton referred to as "paradise lost". Child pornography is the greatest evil and it generates more money than the oil industry. That is what makes this debate relevant. To be obliged to address such an issue in the Seanad takes my breath away. Such is the seriousness of this motion, however, it must be expressed in the kind of language which can expose those who perpetrate crimes of this type against children. We must legislate to introduce the kind of methods by which we can find a way into the realms of technopoly and technocracy and then stop, block and remove the material to which I refer. Technology is now a kind of fulfilment: it is creativity, it is a purpose but, unfortunately, it is also pornographic. For all our lives, there is now a technological alternative. What happens with the images to which I refer is that ever-increasing numbers of them are subjected to generation storing and distribution in more convenient ways and at greater speeds than ever before. In essence, what is happening is an elevation of this kind of information to some sort of acceptable, metaphysical level.

The quest to access the information to which I refer is as horrifying as the images themselves. What we are trying to do in the form of this motion is bring about the introduction of legislation to stop such horror running amok. At present, we have reached a kind of dysfunctional level and there has been a breakdown in the control mechanisms. Information without regulation is lethal. To the perpetrators of horrific abuse crimes against children, the accommodation - in the absence of suitable controls or blocks - of web pages is something of a wayward licence or gift. It should, of course, be the direct opposite. Child pornography takes its authorisation from and finds its perverted satisfaction in technology. It also takes its orders from technology and creates its own continued and uncontrolled perversion through technology. It is these aspects of the problem to which Senator van Turnhout and I are trying to put a halt through encouraging the introduction of legislation.

Sexuality is the new truth. It is also a new form of truth-telling. We are accepting its availability and its infusion into all we do without knowing we are doing so. The world of pornography is only a small step away. It would not be so relevant if that were not the case. One's sexuality is now everybody's business, intimacy is now public and the computer is now a kind of meta-medium. Child pornography not only directs our knowledge of the world but also our ways of knowing. It is all show business and we are beginning not to be able to separate the awful from the unconscionable.

Abuse of children on the Internet, presented to anybody and all in the guise of knowing, sexually-enticing adults entirely comfortable in the milieu of eroticism, is outrageous. Our tolerance for humiliation is becoming inexhaustible and the boundaries of our behaviour are becoming broader, whether it is in respect of clothes, food games or entertainment. We are all moving towards a uniformity and sameness of style and our tolerance for pornographic language is following this. There are no secrets left in the context of language and meaning. The latter are both used by adults and children with the same ease and violence. We live quite well in highly sexualised excitement. Sex and sexuality are no longer adult mysteries. They are available to everyone, like mouthwash or under-arm deodorant.

The leap to child pornography, while humanly outrageous, does not seem that surprising. If we have become used to and comfortable with such displays of soft pornography, the adult child becomes a kind of aspiration and childhood begins to disappear. It is now merely a matter of how one wants to state the problem. The fading distinction between childhood and adulthood is nowhere more evident than in the abuse of children within pornography. The onset of the world of technopoly and technocracy - the great and gifted world wide web - has opened the door for the very worst of human crimes, namely, those against the innocence of children. The great and good world wide web has forged and honed crimes against child humanity which are difficult to detect, extremely difficult to police and even more difficult either to control or bring to an end. Blocking solutions have matured and are well known to providers of Internet services.

In order that we might begin to tackle this evil, I ask that the Oireachtas support the motion, which recommends that the type of abusive material in question be blocked on servers within the jurisdiction of all EU member states and beyond. If this is done, it will allow us to afford protection to children and families in Ireland. Blocking is the next best thing to deletion.

Pornography and abuse of children are only a mouse click away. Denying abusers access to images of the latter would at least be a start. We cannot bargain with children's lives. It is both our job and our duty to protect children. If we cannot do that or put in place mechanisms which can facilitate it, then we should not be sitting in the Seanad.