Ms Ana Niculescu:

In terms of resources, I spoke earlier about the international report management system we use and how each image can contribute to the Interpol child sexual abuse database. That requires a lot of work. Previously and under current procedures, one image on one website is enough to render the entire website illegal. If we go into image assessment, and, obviously, the merits of that are great for law enforcement, that will imply more work and the need for more content analysts to perform that work. To give a rough example, one website was reported that broke into thousands of images. It took one content analyst almost two days to assess every single image and then be able to close that case and forward it to the appropriate jurisdiction.

In terms of international co-operation, Hotline.ieworks within this jurisdiction so we take action against child sexual abuse imagery hosted in Ireland. However, given the nature of the Internet, one can never really know where the content is hosted until one confirms that it is child sexual abuse imagery. At that stage, one tries to identify the source country.

If it is outside Irish jurisdiction and if the country has a hotline, then all the work that we have done nationally and all the technical information is forwarded through secure channels to that hotline. That hotline can then assess the content based on the relevant national legislation and ensure that similar appropriate measures are taken.

I am happy to report that in over 18 years of operations less than 0.5% of the content was found to be hosted in Ireland. However, with Ireland becoming a digital hub for many international companies we have started to notice a slight increase in recent years. That is why I strongly believe that a co-ordinated national approach and working with the whole Internet industry, not only the access providers, is important. Most of the child sexual abuse imagery that we have identified has been hosted on non-Internet-service-provider member services. To be able to take action against such services, we had to go through law enforcement channels because there was no point of contact and we received no answer. As a result, it took longer than it should have.