Seanad report: Many people who considered themselves to be "good" human beings availed of pornography, Ms Joanna Tuffy (Lab) said.
One of the things that we needed to do in our education system was to educate young people to understand that when they considered looking at such images they needed to bring their consciences into play and realise that behind such depictions was the reality of the exploitation of young and vulnerable women.
Referring to a newspaper story about the distribution by mobile phone of apparently pornographic images of a schoolgirl, Ms Tuffy said that a recent EU report had stated that around 70 per cent of the money spent on the Internet went on pornography.
As legislators, they should be doing all they could to limit the availability of such material.
Mr Terry Leyden (FF) said that the Minister for Communications should carry out an immediate examination of the abuse of video phones of the kind which had been highlighted in yesterday's Irish Examiner. The Minister should bring forward regulations to control the use and abuse of these phones.
Mr John Hanafin (FF) said it was not beyond the capabilities of technology to put a block on mobile phones to prevent pornographic images being transmitted. Phone companies, which were making huge sums of money, should be asked to do this voluntarily.
Mr Labhrás Ó Murchú (FF) said the pornography industry was one of the largest industries in the world and thousands, if not millions, of people were being exploited by it.
Dr Maurice Hayes (Ind) said another problem was that much of this distasteful material originated outside of EU states.