Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is shocking to hear the news of the 10,000 images, on which the Leader has also spoken. That the images were gathered in the first place is really sinister and suggests an orchestrated facility to exchange images of women and underage girls. While some of the photographs and images were taken unbeknown to the victims, many of the images were conveyed in a trusting relationship where the original recipient was someone who was known and trusted.

Consent is everything and the context of sharing is everything to the permitted use of the images of another person. Photographs shared in an intimate relationship have a very confined context and to share them without the consent of another is a very serious violation on a whole heap of levels, but also of privacy. I will address the privacy element today.

It should be instinctive that photographs exchanged in an intimate context should be deleted at the termination of the relationship, or at the very least that they most certainly should not be shared. That is a serious lack of awareness and consideration, or a misunderstanding at its very least, of fundamental privacy rights. It is a serious flaw in our thinking and our use of technology that we do not have that instinctive sense of privacy and boundaries.

It is of deeper concern that underage girls have been victims of this. CyberSafeIreland has said that 93% of pre-teens own smart devices. This is 93% who have the potential to share inappropriate images, and people who share those images on are committing a criminal offence.

We need a debate in the House and we need the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, to look at the feasibility of running privacy education in our schools. This must be fundamental to our curriculum in this rapidly changing world.