Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte has said he would be “quite happy” to examine proposals to introduce 
internet porn filters to protect children just days after he said that the issue was not a priority.
Last week, Mr Rabbitte said he was not going to look into a scheme being pursued in the UK, where there will be a default block on porn sites, and adults will have to sign up in order to view pornography.
His comments came after the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said his attitude to following the British approach to internet pornography was “disappointing”.
And an independent Senator said that the “gross” nature of online pornography meant that action needed to be taken to protect children.
Senator Mary Ann O’Brien said the effect of internet pornography on children was devastating. “They think these gross scenes are normal,” she said.
Speaking yesterday in the Seanad, Senator O’Brien referred to Mr Rabbitte’s refusal to compel Irish ISPs to block porn sites.
She said: “Half of the children in this country have access to a smartphone and all of them have access to a computer. Let us not pretend for one minute that we all know what they are looking at.
“I ask all Members to join me in asking the Leader for a debate on this issue to ask the Minister why he is not forcing the Web firms to block pornography to our children.”
In response, Mr Rabbitte said he would be “quite happy” to examine the British proposal, which is being promoted by Prime Minister David Cameron.
However he claimed that EU rules made it illegal to compel ISPs to block material in the manner suggested by Senator O’Brien.
He added that the British legislation also seeks to tackle certain extreme types of “obnoxious material” which is already illegal in Ireland.
“We shouldn’t conflate two things. Obnoxious material is already illegal in Ireland, but not in UK, thereafter you are talking about his voluntary code that he will require these family friendly filters to be put in place.
“Most experts will say that tech savvy young people will be savvy enough to access but they may well have the merits of young people not stumbling across the kind of material that no parent would want them to see.”
Meanwhile the ISPCC said it was “disappointing” that the Government did not believe this should be a priority.
Marge Roe, the manager of the ISPCC’s Childline service said she supported Mr Cameron’s campaign to tackle internet pornography which she said was “corroding childhood”.
“It sounds like a very simple and effective means of filtering out pornography,” she explained.
“To look at what’s happening in the UK, to see if it’s a viable option for Ireland and to see if it’s a tool that can navigate their way around, it’s not going to work because children are very IT savvy. If it’s possible to do this in an effective way, we should take steps to make sure it happens.”
Ms Roe said that children regularly contacted the service to say they had been disturbed by pornographic images they came upon on the internet.
“I think it has a huge impact on children,” Ms Roe said on RTE Radio’s Morning Ireland today.
“In Childline, we would have children and young teenagers who would ring us and maybe have accidentally come across pornography online.
“Recently, we had a call where a young person peer-pressured him into watching porn.
“He said that he felt weird and uncomfortable afterwards, he was disturbed by what he had seen. It can have a serious affect on them. You can imagine a younger child – some of the material online can be quite graphic and quite violent. That can be quite frightening for a young child.”
While parents needed to be open and involved with their children to monitor what they were accessing, many were not technologically savvy enough to install filters themselves.
This is why automatic filters were a better option, she said.
“It’s also the case that it’s not just one computer in the home with internet access any more, you have smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices as well,” Ms Roe said.
She noted that a major report into tackling cyber-bullying had been published this week. But, she said, that was not the only technological threat to young people and the Government should take all steps necessary to guard children.