Noeline Blackwell

The Children’s Rights Alliance has expressed alarm and deep concern over the looming expiration of the agreement on 3 April 2026.

The temporary derogation from the EU’s ePrivacy Directive has been in place since 2021 pending the agreement of a permanent legal basis.

MEPs recently voted for a further one-year extension to the derogation, but it has failed to be agreed by EU governments.

Noeline Blackwell, online safety co-ordinator for the Children’s Rights Alliance, said: “Children in Ireland and across the EU are already at risk being targeted and pursued by child sex abusers and groomers every day because the current level of protection by digital platforms is appallingly weak.

“Now, because of a row between the European Parliament and the European Council, that very limited protection is due to end on 3rd April.”

She continued: “While this week’s failure is by the European Council of Ministers, last week’s decision by the European Parliament to decrease the already weak monitoring systems that the platforms have in place was a massive disappointment for children’s safety and welfare.

“This further reduction in responsibility for the platforms gives some credence to the European Council’s position when it now says that what they were being asked to accept was almost meaningless.

“The debate about child safety online has a longstanding, contentious history at EU Institutional level, with little agreement about how to balance children’s rights to be protected from exploitation and harm and the general public’s right to data privacy.

“There are proposals for permanent solutions but meanwhile the current debate was about extending the current, and admittedly weak, stop gap.”

“The European Parliament’s reduction last week of what could be monitored for child sex abusers played out whereby MEPs found it ‘proportionate’ that only non-encrypted material relating to known, proven abusers could be monitored. This meant that all encrypted material, all those seeking to groom, and all new potential abusers would be excluded.

“The European Council Presidency, currently with Cyprus, and soon to transfer to Ireland, saw this as fairly useless and they have a point.

“They, and the EU Parliament also have two weeks to fix the problem, while we all hold our breath for the safety of children.”

While admitting there is “no short-term solution to the bigger problem of the massive risk of child sexual abuse and exploitation online”, Ms Blackwell has called “for all the EU institutions to come down off their high horses and, at the very least, agree that the platforms should be asked and allowed to extend the weak monitoring they were doing then”.

“Equally, every single one of the platforms is at liberty this minute to confirm to the EU institutions that they care – at least a bit – about children being sexually abused and groomed online and that they will continue the monitoring that they are doing if the EU allows them to do it,” she added.

Ms Blackwell concluded: “It’s a pitifully weak solution but it’s an improvement on the cliff-edge that all the players, Irish EU MEPs, our government and other governments and the EU Commission are inching our children and young people towards.

“A recent worldwide study found that approximately one in five children in western Europe reported experiencing unwanted or pressured sexual interactions online before the age of 18.

“That’s far too many. But failure of the EU, and Irish interests at the EU, to act sensibly and quickly risks even more harm to even more young people. It must not be allowed to happen.”