The "safeguarding of children” should not take a “backseat to the sexual practices of adults”, Ciara Kelly has said. 

Users accessing online pornography in the UK could soon be required to have their face scanned under measures announced by Ofcom to stop children accessing such material.

Enforcement guidelines, which will apply to social media platforms as well as sites such as OnlyFans and PornHub, stipulate that children will no longer be able to simply assert their age to view pornography online.

Users will have to prove their age though methods like credit card checks, a photo ID or some kind of facial age estimation.

"The privacy of porn users versus the safety of children"

On Newstalk Breakfast, presenter Ciara Kelly said she is not sure that adults accessing pornography would be happy with these new laws if they were brought into Ireland.

“I think there's been a debate about this for a long time and the debate basically boils down to the privacy of porn users versus the safety of children,” she said.

“I think up until now, the privacy of porn users has trumped the other and I don't think it should."

Ciara said she tried out accessing PornHub to see how easy it would be for a child to access the site.

Within seconds after hitting a button that said, ‘Are you over 18?’, the presenter said she was able to view graphic and violent pornography.

An upset child covering her face with hands. Image: Alamy

Ciara said there are primary school children that are becoming deeply affected from having accessed such content.

“I would know a lot of people involved in the local schools, national schools, where I live, and they are now having problems,” she said.

“National school - primary schools – kids, who not [just] under the age of 18 [but] under the age of 12 - half of them, they're having problems with kids [and] kids are struggling because they have been viewing porn and they are disturbed by it, because they are six and seven and eight.

“They are in senior infants, they are in third class, they are little kids.

“We have always protected kids, we've always had ratings on movies, we've always had magazines on the top shelf.

“We were talking about banning energy drinks for kids, for God's sake.”

"Bigger picture"

Ciara said adults accessing these sites don’t want limitations brought in to accessing porn because they don’t want their face or credit card associated with these sites.

“The pushback is adults who view porn don't want facial recognition, etc, to be brought in because it's their face too," she said.

"They don't want, you know, credit card checks because it's their credit card, they don't want IDs [because] they don't want their use of porn to be tracked.

“But that's the only way we can do it.

“I don't know when safeguarding children took a backseat to the sexual practices of adults.

“It seems to me that that is really a rubicon that we've sort of crossed in many aspects of progress and it's stupid and it's wrong.”

Co-presenter Shane Coleman agreed with all of Ciara’s points, saying people needed to look at the “bigger picture” if they are upset about tactics to stop children from accessing porn affecting them.

Split image: Ciara Kelly (L) and child with head on desk (R)