LAST UPDATE | 7 Feb

IRELAND IS AMONG five European countries that today were called on by the European Commission to take more action against the sharing of terrorist content posted online.

The Commission claims that Ireland, Estonia, Luxembourg, Portugal and Poland failed to comply with obligations in EU law that ensure social media websites address the misuse of their platforms to spread terrorist content.

Five European states have allegedly not have appointment the correct authorities with the responsibility of issuing removal orders. The Commission claims the countries also have not notified the EU of who those authorities are.

However, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice told The Journal that it has tasked An Garda Síochána with issuing orders to remove posts and Coimisiún na Meán as the body to ensure the regulations are enforced.

They added that additional powers to allow gardaí to issue preservation and production orders were signed off by government just yesterday. The EU regulation, named Regulation on dissemination of terrorist content online, came into effect in June 2022.

The European Commission has also alleged that the states have yet to appoint a public contact or outline online rules and penalties in cases of non-compliance.

The same legislation proposal, signed off yesterday, appointed Coimisúin na Meán with these powers. The Department of Justice spokesperson added that a competent authority is yet to be appointed for the scrutiny of cross-border removal orders. 

“This matter is under active consideration within the Department, including through consideration of and contacts with counterpart bodies in other Member States,” the spokesperson added.

Examples of poor compliance have already been revealed by The Journal last week when documents showed that posts targeting migrants remained online during the riot in Dublin city centre last November, despite a plea from the media regulator to remove the content.

In the week after the riot, justice minister Helen McEntee claimed a female garda detective had contacted social media companies to remove “vile” posts on their platforms and that all of them but X, formerly Twitter, had engaged.

X denied this claim by the Minister and said it had “taken action” on more than 1,230 pieces of content under its rules relating to the riots.

Later documents, released to The Journal, found that X had replied to the media commission’s requests around 55 minutes after the regulator’s initial plea. Despite this, many posts remained online.