In July 2012 a court imposed 16 orders against him, including forbidding him from posing as a film director or journalist in search of child subjects.

A “vulnerable” man in his 30s who was waiting for a lift in Castleisland, Co Kerry, was followed by a group of young people who thought he was a recently released convicted paedophile.

The Office of the Press Ombudsman says it is powerless to seek redress for a man, who was wrongly identified as a sex offender and a threat to children on the Facebook page of a local news outlet, as the organisation is not a member.

A sex offender who posed as a casting agent for TV programmes on the social networking site Bebo and set up an ‘audition’ for a 16-year-old boy who he then sexually assaulted, has been jailed for four-and-a-half years at Trim Circuit Court.