Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for his presentation. In common with Senators on all sides, I welcome the directive and hope it will be transposed into law before the deadline passes. I commend Senator van Turnhout on her excellent report which has filled in the gaps in knowledge that many Senators have about this issue.

I propose to focus on two issues. The Minister of State indicated that vetting procedures were already a requirement of the Children First national guidelines and that approximately 300,000 vetting applications are processed by the Garda vetting unit each year. Notwithstanding the success of the Minister in his first 18 months in office in improving vetting procedures, I am aware that processing times have increased rather than decreased. The Minister promised to provide greater resources for Garda vetting and I assume this has been done. I am also aware that the training of personnel was an issue. I ask the Minister of State to provide an assurance that processing periods will be reduced to the greatest degree possible. In many cases, people who wish to work in child care must wait for vetting procedures to be completed before they are employed. This causes considerable inconvenience. Notwithstanding this, I compliment the Minister on introducing greater efficiencies in this area. I ask the Minister of State to outline the current position with regard to resources and processing times in the Garda vetting unit.

On the measures against websites containing or disseminating child pornography and Article 25 of the directive, I acknowledge that a large body of legislation has been introduced in the area of child protection. The Minister of State referred to various Acts dating back to 2000.

Senator van Turnhout's report recommends that the Government work with large online search engines such as Google and the Internet Watch Foundation to implement a filtering system with the most up-to-date technology. The Senator correctly noted that Dublin is regarded as the Internet capital of Europe and, as such, we are in a unique position to adapt and develop the most innovative measures in filtering and put ourselves forward as a leader in this field. The report points out that Google recently announced its intention to create a global database of child abuse material, which it will then share with its competitors, Internet service providers, ISPs, and law enforcement agencies to facilitate the removal of offending material. I subscribe to the view that filtering should be placed on a statutory footing and should no longer be voluntary. I am particularly pleased that Google has given a commitment to establish an information exchange system with other online companies to ensure the list is as up to date as possible. I hope the Department will work with the company on this issue.

While it may no longer be relevant, I raise an issue that arose some years ago when I was a member of the Council of Europe and the issue of filtering and censorship, in the widest definition of the word, of unacceptable images on the Internet first entered the public domain. At that time, there was strong resistance from the United States, particularly from Internet companies, to any such measures. The US Constitution includes freedom of speech provisions which would inhibit the right of anyone to stop the information highway. Has the environment changed in the intervening years as a result of the growth in child pornography? Is there a general acceptance internationally that this problem should be stamped out, in as far as possible, through filtering? As Senator van Turnhout noted, a large number of countries have already acted in this matter. I note, however, that the United States is not one of them. Do the US constitutional rights to freedom of expression and information have relevance in this regard and, if so, do they inhibit efforts to secure worldwide agreement on the filtering out of bad images?