Gardaí in Dublin are investigating the circumstances in which child pornographic material was saved on a computer at a Dublin Institute of Technology.
The material was found on a computer at a laboratory in DIT's Kevin Street campus. The computer room is a shared facility used by hundreds of students from the college.
The material came to light after the memory in one computer showed several sites carrying child pornography had been accessed. A student inadvertently accessed one of the sites on October 29th after trying to open a folder stored on the computer.
The college authorities alerted gardaí, who examined all of the computers in the laboratory. Just one was found to have been used to access the images. The college closed the laboratory and "cleaned" the memories of all of the computers. The computer room is used by so many students the college believes those behind the incident may never be caught.
A spokeswoman said DIT had not ruled out the possibility that the material might have deliberately been left on display as part of a student prank. She said the location of the computer, in a shared room, suggested the images were not accessed by somebody with more sinister motives.
"It may have been a sick joke. It is the kind of incident that we take very seriously and if someone is found doing this kind of thing we have disciplinary measures in place which can result in suspension or expulsion," she said.
The spokeswoman added the college's computer system had been fitted with "firewalls" to prevent users from accessing known offensive websites.
