Up to seven years for revenge porn

CABINET has approved plans to make the sharing of intimate explicit images without consent illegal and punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The legislation – originally drafted by the Labour Party three years ago – was approved by Cabinet yesterday and is on the way to the Justice Committee as part of the second stage of the proposed new law.

Non-consensual publishing or distributing of an explicit image with the intent to harm the person pictured or videoed can be punished with up to seven years in jail, while the sharing of an intimate image without the intent to harm will carry a maximum 12month prison sentence and/or a €5,000 fine.

The memo to Cabinet on the proposed new law was brought forward by Justice Minister Helen McEntee who insisted that it was a ‘coincidence’ that it was brought to Cabinet a week after a dump of thousands of intimate images of Irish women was reported on.

She said: ‘This is a piece of legislation that originated in the Private Members’ Bill put forward initially by Brendan Howlin back in 2017 and I want to sincerely thank Brendan Howlin for the huge amount of work that has gone into this and his continuous engagement with the Department in that regard.’

Earlier in the day, outside the Dáil, an i ncensed Labour leader Alan Kelly accused Ms McEntee of having ‘some neck’ for holding a press conference on a Labour Bill without crediting his party. He said ‘there are necks in politics and then there are necks’ at the prospect of Fine Gael ‘copying’ another Labour Bill aimed at making ‘revenge porn’ illegal.

Mr Kelly added that Fine Gael also stole his party’s sick pay legislation and the working from home Bill.