Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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697. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of prosecutions directed under Coco’s Law in respect of image-based sexual abuse and cyberbullying, respectively, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16723/25]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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698. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if he will make a statement on Coco’s Law, both in respect of image-based sexual abuse and cyberbullying. [16724/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 697 and 698 together.

The Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, also known as Coco’s Law was enacted by my predecessor, Minister McEntee, in 2021.

This Act provides for offences relating to the recording, distribution or publication of intimate images and for the anonymity of victims of those offences; and for an offence involving the distribution, publication or sending of threatening or grossly offensive communications.

It addresses the distribution or publication of an intimate image without consent with intent to cause harm to the victim. The Act makes it an offence to threaten to distribute or publish such an image. It also provides for a liability offence to engage in the recording, distribution or publication of an intimate image without consent, with no requirement to prove an intention to cause harm.

The Act also seeks to target other areas of harmful communications by creating an offence of distributing, publishing, or sending a threatening or grossly offensive communication with intent to cause harm, and to extend the offence of harassment to deal with communications about a person, as well as communications to a person.

Prosecutions are a matter for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which is entirely independent in its remit.

However, an operational review of the legislation, carried out by my Department and published last year, found positive early indicators in terms of prosecutions taken, the number of reports of intimate image abuse made to a hotline for illegal content, and general awareness of the legislation.

The review found that the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions had taken a total of 99 cases in respect of section 2, 3 or 4 of the Act between its commencement and the end of 2023.

This included:

• A total of 23 cases prosecuted on indictment in the Circuit Court;
• The DPP consented to summary disposal on guilty plea for eight cases;
• The DPP directed summary disposal on 68 cases;
• One case was prosecuted on indictment in the Central Criminal Court.

The review noted independent research from August 2021 which found that 69% thought it was against the law to share intimate images without consent, and 51% thought it was against the law to threaten to share intimate images.

A follow up piece of research conducted in November 2023 found that those figures had jumped to 97% and 96%, after a public awareness campaign.

As part of the awareness campaign, the Department of Justice partnered with Hotline.ie to provide a widely accessible reporting mechanism for victims of intimate image abuse. Once illegal content is reported to Hotline, their experts assess the report and decide on next steps.

Any online service provider served by Hotline.ie with an intimate image abuse notice is responsible for removing the content at source.

The review found that, between September 2021 and December 2023, almost 1,500 reports were made to Hotline.ie which, after assessment, were found to be intimate image abuse.

Some 1,006 of these were images or videos shared without the person’s consent via publicly accessible web-locations and Hotline.ie was able to get 92% removed.

Hotline.ie also received more than 400 reports relating to threats to share intimate images. This included 366 cases of sexual extortion and 27 threats to share intimate images for harassment purposes.

While the review concluded that it was too soon to make sweeping generalisations, particularly as it can take some time for cases to proceed through the system, it was heartening to see the legislation’s positive impact three years after commencement.

Online safety is a whole-of-Government issue, with responsibility for relevant measures shared across a number of Departments and agencies.

Coimisiún na Meán has been established further to the provisions of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 and operates under the aegis of my colleague, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. The Act empowers an Online Safety Commissioner, as part of the wider Coimisiún na Meán, to hold designated online services to account through binding online safety codes. These codes set out obligations in relation to how these services tackle, at a systemic level, the availability of defined categories of harmful online content.

Among other things, these codes set out obligations for video-sharing platforms to restrict certain categories of video and associated content such as: cyberbullying, promotion of eating disorders, self-harm and suicide, and incitement to hatred or violence on a range of grounds including gender, political affiliation, disability, and ethnic minority membership.