THE NUMBER of internet child pornography complaints increased significantly in the Republic last year, a new internet watchdog has found.
Complaints about child pornography now outnumber all combined complaints relating to illegal conduct on the internet.
The annual report of Hotline.ie reveals some 828 grievances referred to it last year by internet users were found to relate to illegal activity.
Of those, 718 were found to relate to child pornography. This was a 70 per cent increase on the 423 confirmed child pornography cases reported to the association in 2006.
Hotline.ie is a website run by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (Ispai) through which internet users can report suspect internet content.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern and Ispai general manager Paul Durrant expressed their concern at the upward trends.
Mr Durrant said while the number of people complaining to his association about child pornography had risen, none of the content at the centre of those complaints had been produced in Ireland or was being hosted by Irish internet providers.
However, he said the severity of the images was increasing, describing them as "horrendous".
"These are images of children, toddlers and sometimes even younger, being raped."
He believed Irish legislation around the policing of such content was strong enough but said the battle against monitoring it and alerting international agencies where it originated was a constant battle.
"It's about shooting this stuff down every time it appears on the internet," he said.
Mr Ahern said of the increase in complaints about internet child pornography: "It's very worrying, particularly in light of the increased availability of the internet and its use by young people."
He noted that not all industry players subscribed to the voluntary code of conduct and in doing so helped fund Ispai. He would not hesitate to introduce a statutory regulatory code if the need arose.
While organisations such as Ispai and the Garda had a major role to play in tackling illegal content, parents need to be vigilant whenever their children used the internet.
Mr Ahern added that a range of other, non-pornographic activity was being engaged in via the internet. This included financial scams, incitement to violence and the promotion of racial hatred.
A total of 2,590 complaints were received by Ispai last year compared with 2,677 in 2006, a reduction of more than 3 per cent.
With many of the complaints the material either could not be found, based on the information provided, was not deemed to be illegal or had already been removed from the internet when investigations were begun.
Some 828 reports were determined to relate to illegal content, of which 718 related to child pornography. There were also six cases of persons attempting to lure a child into engaging in sexual contact.
In the remaining 104 cases of illegal content, 10 related to incitement to hatred or violence directed at an individual with seven of the computer-related hacking variety or virus-spreading scams, and 87 related to financial scams.
The latter included bogus e-mails purporting to be from wellknown banks and requesting account holders supply their account details.
When Ispai receives a complaint it tries to locate the material and assess if it is criminal. If so, the association contacts any international agency which has the power to take the material off the internet as quickly as possible.
When material is located and taken down criminal investigations in other jurisdictions are often begun. Ispai also has a role in referring cases to the Garda.
In some cases gardaí have assisted international inquiries where Irish users have accessed illegal material online that originated in other countries.
