Ireland\u2019s premier, Miche\u00e1l Martin, has said \u201cmomentum is building\u201d in Europe for a ban on children\u2019s social media use.<\/p>\n
The European Parliament President, Roberta Metsola, praised Ireland for its \u201cleadership\u201d on social media protection but said there is a \u201chuge need for something to be done for our kids online\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Metsola spoke alongside the Taoiseach at Dublin Castle following a bilateral meeting between the pair ahead of Ireland\u2019s hosting of the EU Presidency from July 1 to December 31.<\/p>\n
A ban on the use of social media by under-16s is due to be in place in the UK by next spring, and similar measures were introduced in Australia in December last year.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s Communications Minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan has previously said it would be \u201cvery embarrassing for the European institutions\u201d if Ireland brought forward social media restrictions for children because of a lack of progress at a European level.<\/p>\n
![\"Ireland](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e78e5c8e2cb4cf06f8241faf91c0eb7e.jpeg\")
Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin and President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola hold a tete-a-tete meeting at Dublin Castle, ahead of Ireland assuming the presidency of the Council of the European Union (Niall Carson\/PA) \u00b7 Niall Carson <\/p>\n
Asked by reporters if he would commit to bringing forward a scheme to restrict social media for children if agreement is not reached on an EU level in the next six months, Mr Martin said the European Commission is planning to bring forward proposals for protecting children online.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome two months ago, I attended a meeting hosted by President Macron in respect of a ban on under-16s, on children on social media, and so a lot of momentum is building up in relation to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as you know, President Von Der Leyen established a group to report back to her in respect of this issue, so we are anticipating further economies and proposals and ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is an opportunity for a European-wide position in respect to protecting children online, which I think would be quite powerful and quite impactful, if we could achieve that across the EU 27.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already have laws in place to protect children, and we will always consider additional domestic laws also, but we believe the preference will be to achieve the European consensus on a pan-European approach to protecting children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Metsola reiterated that the EU is working on \u201cconcrete measures\u201d to shield children from online harm, saying \u201cas a mother, these things keep me up at night\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also would like to wait for the Commission\u2019s proposal, because our wish is for us to have a coherent European approach, which gives a little bit of predictability for us as a continent as to how rules that would gain consensus would then be rolled out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then I also follow on what the Taoiseach said about Irish domestic laws, and I would like to thank Ireland for its leadership in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Metsola referred to Jackie Fox, a campaigner who advocated for the introduction of \u201cCoco\u2019s Law\u201d in Ireland, which makes it an offence to share or threaten to share intimate images on digital devices without consent and criminalises severe online bullying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had Jackie Fox in Parliament a few months ago, and her experience and pushing through Coco\u2019s law on cyber bullying, rolls over to a unified parliament position to have that on European level and that is something that comes from Ireland, and would be able to be done because there is huge need for something to be done for our kids online in this regard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola praised Ireland for its \u201cleadership\u201d on social media protection but said there is a \u2018huge need for something to be done for our kids online\u2019 (Niall Carson\/PA) \u00b7 Niall Carson <\/p>\n
In his opening comments, the Taoiseach said his meeting with Ms Metsola \u201ccentred around the priorities of Ireland\u2019s presidency under the three core themes of competitiveness and values and security\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked if Ireland was \u201cout of step\u201d with the EU on a number of issues, such as Ireland\u2019s rejection of the Mercosur trade deal and suspending trade with Israel, Mr Martin said \u201cacross the European Union there\u2019s always a wide spectrum\u201d of opinion.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Tuesday, Ms Metsola paid a courtesy call to President Catherine Connolly at \u00c1ras an Uachtar\u00e1in.<\/p>\n
She also held meetings with T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris and Foreign Minister Helen McEntee, as well as with the speaker of Ireland\u2019s parliament in Leinster House.<\/p>\n
Ms Metsola also visited Croke Park, where she viewed a demonstration of Gaelic games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s premier, Miche\u00e1l Martin, has said \u201cmomentum is building\u201d in Europe for a ban on children\u2019s social media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1045529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[389,2000,196726,299,5187,1699,20730,678,681,31621,182,246611],"class_list":["post-1045528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-children","tag-eu","tag-eu-presidency","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-european-parliament","tag-ireland","tag-micheal-martin","tag-roberta-metsola","tag-social-media","tag-taoiseach"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116801054125041154","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1045529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}