It is about time.
Loopholes in Irish legislation have allowed for the publication and sharing of revenge porn to long go unpunished by the Irish legal system. This is about to change.
Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has received approval to draft the Non-Fatal Offences(Amendment) Bill, which will make it a criminal offence to post intimate images of a person on-line without their consent.
The reccommended punishment for publishing revenge porn is a maximum fine of €5000 and/or 12 months imprisonment. The government has not yet decided whether they will follow these recommendations as made by The Law Reform Commission, insisting that the punishment must be appropriate to the offence.
The new bill will also make it an offence to send threatening or indecent messages on social media.
Up until now revenge porn has been covered only by a definition of harassment in the Non-Fatal Offences Against the State Act and in some cases if the harassment is not 'persistent', meaning if images are uploaded once, then it is not classified as harassment and therefore not deemed to be illegal.
The trend of revenge porn extends beyond the high-profile cases of celebrity cyber-hacks and remains a constant threat of people's lives in Ireland.
