Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has insisted her department and agencies are taking “robust measures” to protect children using the internet.

Experts are concerned at the emergence of an online retail market selling sexualised images, either extorted from children or taken from photographs and videos, voluntarily uploaded by minors onto social network sites.

In January 2014, a man was arrested as part of a major investigation into online child sexual exploitation. The individual had more than 80 social networking profiles, email addresses, and video chat accounts to sexually abuse children via webcams on compute