Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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235. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the total costs incurred by her Department from 2019 to date relating to the placing of advertisements in online/digital media platforms; the names of the online platforms involved, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23450/24]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I can inform the Deputy that my Department has run a number of public awareness campaigns between 2019 and 2024, most of which have involved a substantial online element. These include:

No Excuses

in 2019 the Department launched a major national awareness campaign on sexual harassment and sexual violence. ‘No Excuses’ was a high impact media campaign designed to reach a national audience.

The campaign ads feature both male and female perpetrators and victims in various situations where sexual harassment and sexual violence can occur.

The Deputy may be pleased to learn that there are many similarities between the UK 'Enough' campaign and our own 'No Excuses' campaign. Both campaign websites are laid out in a similar manner and have a focus on informing bystanders about safe ways they can intervene if they witness incidences of DSGBV.

Still Here

The Still Here campaign was launched in April 2020 to reassure victims of domestic violence that front-line services and the full force of the Justice System were ‘still here’ for them during the pandemic, and that victims were being prioritised. The campaign highlighted a tragic reality that for many people in Ireland during the pandemic, their home is not a safe place, especially during lockdown periods that were necessary to curtail the spread of Covid-19.

We intend to run the Still Here campaign again over the Christmas period to let victims know support is still available to them during the festive period, a time when we know incidences of such violence increase.

Intimate Image Abuse

In September 2021, my Department launched a campaign to raise awareness of image-based sexual abuse and to better inform people of Coco's Law, which was introduced to combat it.

At its core, the campaign aims to educate wider Irish society that sharing intimate images without consent is socially unacceptable, has harmful consequences and there is legislation in place with appropriate punitive measures that will challenge these actions, regardless of a persons motivation for doing so.

This campaign is currently running on TV and across various mediums and will be further developed in 2023 to raise awareness of the fact that threatening to share intimate images without consent is also a criminal offence.

In advance of running national level campaigns, research is carried out to identify both the target audience and the online platforms and services they engage with. The use of different platforms ensures the campaign reaches the maximum target audience.

For the period requested the annual expenditure on digital advertising is:

The full listing of online providers for digital advertisements in the relevant period is provided below: