AN international register of convicted paedophiles should be drawn up by the UN as part of a world wide offensive against child sex rings, the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, told a conference in Strasbourg yesterday.
He also called on the EU urgently to investigate controls on the transmission of pornography on the Internet.
The organisers put at one million the numbers of children involved in the multi billion pound pornography, prostitution and trafficking industries worldwide.
Mr Mitchell was delivering a keynote address to a joint meeting organised by UNICEF and the Council of Europe on the commercial exploitation of children.
It is part of regional preparatory meetings for a world congress on the issue to be held in Stockholm in August.
The Minister said that "while paedophiles using the latest technology are plying their evil trade on a transnational basis, attempts to bring them to justice are being hampered by the lack of an adequate international response."
Mr Mitchell also called for closer liaison between police forces on the issue. The Commission should also be given responsibility for co ordinating analysis and collating information on the scale of the problem.
Mr Mitchell told the meeting Ireland was planning to introduce legislation to prohibit the organisation of travel abroad for the purposes of sex tourism and to make Irish citizens who commit any act with a child abroad which would be an offence in Ireland liable for charges in Ireland.
The conference is also being addressed by, among others, the EU Judicial Affairs Commissioner, Ms Anita Grad in, and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Dr Daniel Tarschys.
