The Children’s Rights Alliance has said fines imposed on social media platform X “will have to be big” after Coimisiún na Meán opened an investigation amid its concerns over its age assurance measures and parental controls.
It is the first formal investigation to be opened under Ireland’s Online Safety Code, which came into force in July 2025.
Coimisiún na Meán said that following reviews by its platform supervision team, concerns arose in relation to the potential ineffective implementation of age assurance mechanisms by X.
Under the Online Safety Code, age assurance is required on the X platform to ensure that children do not see videos depicting pornography, extreme and gratuitous violence, or acts of cruelty.
Separately, as the X platform allows adult-only content and also allows children under the age of 16 to use its service, it is required to provide parental control systems to ensure that parents and guardians have control over what type of content their children encounter.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, online safety co-ordinator Noeline Blackwell said age recognition is one of the biggest questions around children using social media.
“The reality is that the tech companies, all of them, and particularly in this case X, know that if they’re going to put adult content, if they’re going to put extreme violence on their platforms … then the way in which they keep children from accessing it has to be effective.
“It is not for the regulator to set down the code that’s needed, they’re well able to do that themselves. They’re just not doing it. The reason they’re not doing it is it keeps children and young people online,” Ms Blackwell said.
She added: “If there are less restrictions on them, it’s less boring for children. They think it’s more exciting, it is more dangerous.
“And this is the aim of all this EU regulation … make the products that the tech companies put out in the EU, make sure they’re safe before they’re put out.
“And if they’re not safe, don’t put them out or face sanctions. Now, we’re nowhere near that.”
If X is found to be in breach of the Online Safety Code, it could be fined up to 10% of relevant annual turnover, or €20 million, whichever is greater.
The investigation will examine whether effective age assurance measures have been put in place by X.
Age assurance based solely on self-declaration is not considered effective.
The inquiry will also examine the parental controls that are in place, and whether X appropriately draws the attention of users to the systems that are available.
Ms Blackwell said tech companies have “really only been subject to regulation for maybe two years, whereas they’ve been running for 20 years without that regulation across Europe”.
“So, that’s where there has to be now a bringing about of a situation where they understand their limits and where the European Union – and where we in Ireland – will not accept that our children are not safe online.”
Ms Blackwell added that it will be important to work out how much money matters to tech companies.
“They make so many squillions of units of currency every day and every minute. So those fines will have to be big.
“But even at that, there will have to be other ways in which they are restricted in what they can put out.
“And that is ultimately possible as well. The EU doesn’t want to go there quickly, but the sanctions will have to hurt,” she said.