A dedicated paedophile investigation unit should be established within the Garda Síochána and legislation should be enacted to ban all child-abuse sites from the Irish internet, the children's charity Barnardo's has said.
These calls are among a series of recommendations in a report published today examining the internet and child safety.
Titled Three Hazards: Child Protection in the Electronic Agefocuses on three primary areas of concern - children's personal privacy, children's data protection and child sex abuse imagery.
Children's privacy is at issue in the area of social networking on such sites as Bebo and MySpace. The information and imagery children and young people volunteer on the sites must be addressed, says the report.
On data protection, the report points out social networking sites are open for business and anyone can join.
"A fifty year-old can pose as a teenager and a nine year-old can equally pose as a teenager too."
Bebo is the largest social site used by young people and children in the State.
"In the course of this study research demonstrated that it is extremely easy to find children on Bebo - where they live, their age, their likes and dislikes, the school they attend etc," says the report.
It says urgent consideration should be given to the development of a "commercially viable age verification and identity management programme for children".
It also calls for amendments to the Data Protection Act, to make it a criminal offence for anyone to misrepresent themselves as a child when contacting children via electronic media.
The viewing and distribution of images of children being sexually abused are now considered to be among the fastest growing criminal activities on the internet.
About one fifth of all pornography on the net is now thought to be child pornography, says the report.
"The extent of depravity knows no bounds. Probably worst of all are instances of abuse involving torture, where children are bound, sexually abused and murdered, or where murder is simulated."
The report calls for legislation to enable Gardaí to block internet content that involves the abuse of children.
"The system would operate by internet serviced providers being advised of the existence of web-sites carrying such material and being ordered to take them down.
"This would not stop child abuse but it would disrupt the market from an Irish point of view," said Barnardo's chief executive Fergus Finlay.
