Fiach MacConghail (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. I thank my fellow Member, Senator Jillian van Turnhout for raising this issue, as I knew nothing about this before the briefing from Interpol last week.

It was upsetting to see the statistics on offenders that the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children provided to us. The profile of an offender is a person like me, as 59% are married, 41% have children and 83% are in the age range from 21 to 50 years - I just about make the 50 years mark. It is extraordinary that as a parent, a husband and a man, I fit the profile of the user. We know it is insidious and that we probably know people in our community who access these images.

The Minister must forgive us our suspicions and our comments, when the Government amendment was tabled, because the one word we were looking for, which Senator McAleese mentioned, that is "blocking", was omitted. I know it is no fault on the part of the Minister, but it has happened in previous Private Members' motions that a Government amendment appeared to be a whitewash. Being a new Member, we were looking for the magic word, which was not there, and I ask the Minister to forgive us. I understand and accept this is not his intention. I welcome his commitment to this House this evening that blocking will be fully considered in the context of the planned sexual offences Bill. I invite him to consider introducing the Bill in the Seanad before it goes to the Dáil.

Being a relative newcomer to the issue of child sexual abuse, I wonder if the hotline is as well known, as the Minister and others might expect. I think we need to promote it more, as well as encourage more self regulation and more reporting. I urge the Minister to look again at ways to promote this hotline. Senator Bradford raised the argument made in Germany, which the Minister also mentioned. The difference in the German context is that when the government changed, it became an ideological issue. The then German government agreed on the new law and the police developed it but with change of government, it was suspended. The opposition is clear, that is the former government is clear, that if it returns to power it will reintroduce blocking. I think it is more of a technical than a real point that Senator Bradford tried to score. In the Dutch case, there was also an ideological argument around blocking. It is not fair to say the government changed its view, it is that the government changed.

The importance of blocking becomes apparent when one examines the available evidence and the scale of the attempts being made to reach known addresses containing child abuse images on the web.