Online social-networking websites such as Bebo are making "very big money" out of the services they provide but are not doing enough to ensure they can verify the age of their users, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said yesterday.
Amid increasing concerns about the "grooming" of young children by older men posing as children or teenagers on such sites, as well as the problem of "cyberbullying", Ms Hanafin said she did not believe Bebo and other sites were meeting their responsibilities to address the issue.
Bebo, which targets its site at younger users, now claims to have more than one million members in Ireland.
Speaking yesterday at the launch of a new website aimed at raising awareness and promoting responsible online practices among young people, Ms Hanafin said that given the international nature of the internet, there were limits to what her department and the Government could do.
In a recent interview with The Irish Times, Dr Rachel O'Connell, chief safety officer with Bebo, suggested that one way of addressing the issue of age verification might be through the allocation of Government-supplied e-mail addresses to every pupil in the State.
However, Ms Hanafin said she did not believe it was appropriate for the Government to interfere with what is "now a social life for young people".
"I don't believe it is something that Government, the Department of Education, should be interfering with . . . we don't sit down and say to them as a Government that a 13-year-old shouldn't talk to a 17-year-old or an 18-year-old," she said.
"And that's basically what you'd be trying to interfere with, the mechanisms. What we should be doing, and what we are doing, are the type of safety campaigns that we're doing . . . We'll continue to do that - that's really important - and to work with parents and to work with teachers, as well as the young people themselves."
She added: "You cannot dictate everything that young people are doing. I think that would be just too much of an interference . . . If there's a million [Bebo] users in Ireland alone, that in itself places a huge responsibility on [such websites]."
Ms Hanafin said there was a need for a co-ordinated approach between her department, parents and service providers. But while she said she could not claim to understand the mechanisms by which websites such as Bebo could offer more protections, she said they were the ones "with the technological expertise".
She added: "They are the people who are making the money out of it. And it is in their interests as well to ensure that people are comfortable using it."
The new website, www.watchyourspace.ie, advises young people to be aware that once they upload information such as photos of themselves, this remains online forever.
One of the key messages of the campaign is for users to be creative but to be in control.
The website was developed by the National Centre for Technology in Education.