The Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern, has welcomed a decision by EU ministers to double spending on measures to make the internet safer for children. The ministers agreed to spend €45 million over the next four years on its second Safer Internet Plan to combat the spread of child pornography.
Much of the funding will go to support whistleblower hotlines across the EU, particularly funding for new accession states, while the scope is also to be broadened to include new media and new issues such as Spam.
Mr Ahern, who chaired the ministers' meeting in Luxembourg, said the decision underpinned EU member states' commitment to tackling child pornography. "I am confident that the new European Parliament will endorse today's decision when they convene shortly to study the new action plan," he said.
An EU survey recently revealed that almost half of all young people in Northern Europe have been approached to meet in person after initially making contact online.
EU Safety, Awareness, Facts and Tools (SAFT) - a cross-European project that aims to promote safe use of the internet among children and young people - found that 46 per cent of children in Northern Europe who chat on the internet say someone has used it to ask to meet them and 14 per cent have actually met someone in this way.
PA