Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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546. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the timeline to ratify of the Council of Europe's Budapest convention on cybercrime; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13431/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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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.