Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 October 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Online Harassment and Harmful Communications: Discussion (Resumed)

Ms Ana Niculescu:

I thank the Deputy for his question. The mandate of hotline.ieis to handle reports of suspected illegal content. In assessing those reports, we have to apply the provisions of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act. If content does not meet the threshold which is clearly detailed in the Act, it will not be classified as child pornography. We prefer to use the term "child sexual abuse material" because of the serious nature of the content. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we are talking about infants to 12 year olds. We also get reports in respect of self-generated content but in terms of the age group, that would involve those aged over 14 years and it is not as severe as the sexual abuse of a two year old infant. I am not sure that-----

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