Almost 3,000 reports of suspected illegal content on the Internet were made in Ireland last year.

Hotline.ie, which examines complaints from the public in relation to suspected illegal content ion the internet, says 96 were assessed as illegal child pornography.

The 2012 figure compares to the high of 684 incidents in 2007.

The origin of the material in four of the cases last year was traced back to servers in Ireland. That's the highest number recorded in one year.

Paul Durrant is the Chief Executive of the Internet Service Providers Association: 

The ISPA says, that with Ireland positioning itself to attract international digital businesses will mean more internationally available cloud services located here, it is committed to ensuring that the new services will not be exploited by criminals.