Mr Godfrey’s comments made to RTÉ News at One come in the wake of the fatal wrong-way crash on the M9 on Sunday in which five teenagers lost their lives and three women and a child were left seriously injured.

Comments from the Garda Commissioner, Justin Kelly, in the aftermath of the crash suggested that, in some cases, this type of reckless and criminal behaviour is being undertaken for “social media likes”. Social media accounts belonging to the deceased teenagers are believed to have regularly posted this type of content.

Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan in a statement made earlier in the week issued a reminder to social media companies that they “have a responsibility to enforce their own code of conduct which prohibits content that glorifies criminal behaviour”.

Once a response has been received from TikTok the regulator will assess whether it is in breach of its responsibilities. If the company are in breach Mr Godfrey said: “we can take things further with investigations and enforcement actions”.

TikTok said that it was “closely monitoring content related to this incident” and would remove videos and accounts that broke the rules.

Established in 2023, replacing the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Coimisiún na Meán is responsible for regulating video sharing platform services established in Ireland and in some cases across the EU under the Digital Services Act.

Mr Godfrey said: “Our main job is to make sure that they have the systems and processes that mean that they take things down proactively. That is really our focus, if they do not have those systems or processes, if they are not adequate, if that results in content not being taken down, then we have powers to demand that they come into compliance. Ultimately there are powers to impose fines of up to 6 per cent of their global turnover.”

Mr Godfrey, however, noted that although there are currently five different such investigations ongoing, they have not yet exercised that power.