Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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501. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the reason for the ongoing delay in Ireland ratifying the Budapest Convention, which, apart from cyber crime, is also a renowned convention to stop child pornography; and to provide a likely date for when we will proceed with this. [29466/24]

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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523. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the reason for the ongoing delay in Ireland's inability to ratify the Budapest Convention (details supplied); and the date when Ireland will proceed with this. [29465/24]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 501 and 523 together.

I can assure the Deputy that Ireland remains fully committed to ratification of the Council of Europe ‘Budapest’ Convention on Cybercrime.

The Convention is divided into three main sections: criminalisation of listed offences; measures for the gathering of evidence in relation to the listed offences and from computer systems generally; and international cooperation.

The vast majority of the Convention’s substantive criminalisation requirements have already been incorporated into Irish law through a number of existing acts. In this regard, the Deputy may wish to note that the Criminal Justice (Offences Relating to Information Systems) Act 2017 provides a comprehensive legal framework for the prosecution of cybercrime offences based on the requirements of the Budapest Convention. Furthermore, the Article 9 requirement of the Convention concerning offences related to ‘child pornography’ (child sexual abuse material - CSAM) is also already addressed by section 2 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998; section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1997; and sections 6, 8 and 12 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017.

Regarding the other elements of the Convention, I am pleased to inform the Deputy that, in January 2024, the Government approved the General Scheme of the Criminal Justice (Protection, Preservation of and Access to Data on Information Systems) Bill 2024, which is intended to give effect to all but four of the remaining articles of the Convention and thus make substantial further progress towards ratification.

For the information of the Deputy, the four remaining articles are Articles 20, 21, 33 and 34, which concern real-time collection of traffic data, interception of content data and the mutual legal assistance provisions around both. It is my intention to address these four articles via separate legislation in due course and to ratify the Convention as soon as possible after that legislation is in place.

Ireland is fully committed to preventing and combating child sexual exploitation and abuse in all its forms, and considerable work is also being done beyond the scope of the Budapest Convention.

Ireland is a Party to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, also known as the Lanzarote Convention. The main aims of the Convention are to prevent and combat sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children, to protect the rights of child victims and to promote national and international co-operation against such conduct.

Ireland has also transposed the 2011 EU Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child sexual abuse material and has recently opted into the 2024 recast of this Directive. Ireland is an active participant in these negotiations, as well as those of the proposed EU Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse.

Hotline.ie is the national reporting channel for suspected CSAM and works with service providers to remove this content and where relevant submits reports to An Garda Síochána. Every year, An Garda Síochána receives thousands of reports of suspected CSAM relating to Ireland from the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In 2023, An Garda Síochána identified 115 victims of child sexual abuse/exploitation in Ireland based on such reports, an increase on the 51 children identified in 2022. An Garda Síochána also regularly liaises with Europol on these matters.