Ireland plants flag for child online safety as it prepares to assume EU presidency

Ireland may soon follow its neighbors in imposing age assurance requirements on adult content platforms. The Times says members of Irish Parliament, Teachta Dala (TDs), have called on national media regulator Coimisiún na Meán to adopt laws similar to those in France, where porn sites must deploy age assurance systems with a double-blind architecture that shares minimal age data and keeps browsing anonymous.

Ireland is set to assume the EU presidency in July 2026, and has made child online safety a key plank of its proposed approach. The issue for Coimisiún na Meán is not intent, but Ireland’s legal capacity to implement a law in line with France. The regulator notes that “France acted under its own domestic legislation, a mechanism not available to other EU countries under the Digital Services Act (DSA).”

‘I assure you, the estimation is verified’: policy trips over terms

The semantics of age checks are also a factor in the debate. The Times quotes Keira Keogh, a Fine Gael TD, who says Ireland’s online safety code “was adopted last October and fully implemented in July. Many people assume that means age verification is in place, but it does not. We have age assurance, whereas the UK and France have age verification.”

Ireland’s Online Safety Code does say that “a video-sharing platform service provider shall establish and operate age verification systems for users of video-sharing platforms with respect to content which may impair the physical, mental or moral development of minors.” That’s vague enough – but the code is also muddy in how it defines “effective age assurance measures.”

Its declared definition of “age verification” includes “effective age assurance measures including age estimation.” This conflates verification and estimation, which are separate methods classified under the umbrella term “age assurance.”

The resulting policy effectively says that a platform looking to comply with the requirement to deploy an effective age verification system could legally deploy an age estimation engine – which does not verify a user’s age.

It’s a circular dance, complicated further by the fact that major porn sites like Pornhub, which are not headquartered in Ireland, are policed by the European Commission and the DSA’s network of digital service co-ordinators, rather than Coimisiún na Meán.

And that doesn’t even touch on social media.

Linking wallet to MyGovID makes it illegal, says civil liberties group

Ireland’s Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan has announced a plan to link online age verification to a government ID, as a way to push the pace on age checks for social media platforms. The Irish Times says the age assurance scheme, which O’Donovan intends to launch within the next four months, takes the form of a digital wallet aligned with the EUDI Wallet project and based on Ireland’s existing MyGovID online authentication system run by the Department of Social Protection.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has raised privacy concerns about linking age checks to a government service it says is illegal. A statement from the organization notes that “in order to get a verified MyGovID account, either in person or online, a person needs a Public Services Card. This necessitates enrolling their facial image in a biometric database controlled by the Department of Social Protection. This database of 70 percent of the population, created unlawfully over the past almost 15 years, was recently found to be illegal by the Data Protection Commission (DPC).”

Furthermore, it argues, “MyGovID itself has no legal basis in Irish legislation. A decade after its inception, it is still being run as a pilot project, without any statutory underpinning whatsoever.”

“For the State to consider expanding or relying further on the already-controversial MyGovID system, especially as it’s underpinned by an unlawful facial biometric database and is still under investigation by the DPC, is deeply irresponsible,” says Olga Cronin, human rights and surveillance senior policy officer for ICCL.

Strength in numbers as Ireland looks to harmonize with EU, UK efforts

While interest in online safety laws for social media is high among Irish politicians, there are concerns that Ireland could face legal challenges if it attempts to follow Australia’s model of a blanket ban on social media for those under 16. Ireland’s tax laws have made it an attractive home for many big tech companies, and it will need to work in step with EU counterparts to be on solid legal ground in defending itself from potential litigation.

Coimisiún na Meán says it is working closely with both the EU and Ofcom to align regulatory frameworks. It has also signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding with Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, which, according to a release, “sets out practical areas of cooperation, including research sharing, policy exchange, co-hosted workshops, and support for enforcement and compliance activities within each regulator’s mandate.”

In the meantime, the Irish regulator has opened up its own investigations into noncompliance by porn sites – but says it wants to be careful about attacking big platforms only to drive users to more obscure ones. John Evans, a digital services media commissioner with the regulator, says “it was recognised that if you come down hard on a few platforms, users, including minors, will simply move to smaller ones. So we and many other digital services co-ordinators are mapping below-threshold pornographic service providers and will tackle those at a national level.”

EU view converging; France weighs online curfew for teens

Several nations, including Denmark, Italy, Spain and Norway, have already followed Australia in taking steps toward restricting youth’s access to social media, and the European Commission has been pondering a digital age of majority that would apply across the EU. President Ursula von der Leyen is a vocal fan of Australia’s law, which she calls “plain common sense.”

Another idea getting an airing in the EU is a digital curfew, which parliamentarians in France have proposed for 15 to 18-year-olds, limiting their access to certain online services overnight.  According to ABC News, French President Emmanuel Macron recently promised that his government will ban all under-15s from social media if the EU doesn’t take action soon. 

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  Coimisiún na Meán (CnM)  |  digital ID  |  digital wallets  |  Ireland  |  Online Safety Code  |  social media