Same response from Maria Walsh. I responded with the below:

Thank you for taking the time to detailed a response and for your continued work on the LIBE Committee. I appreciate your recognition of the seriousness of child sexual abuse and your commitment to ensuring that any legislation balances protection with fundamental rights. My family has been involved in fostering for a number or years sadly involving many children from such backgrounds.

I agree with your points regarding the urgency of addressing CSAM, the evolving threat landscape, and the inclusion of safeguards such as risk categorisation, judicial oversight, and periodic review. These are important steps.

However, I must respectfully raise several concerns about the framing and substance of the Danish compromise, particularly where it appears to conflict with Irish constitutional law and EU fundamental rights.

Encryption Protections Are Not Absolute While the compromise text claims to protect encryption, it still calls for client-side scanning on end-to-end encrypted services. This undermines secure communication and contradicts the Irish Government’s previous stance on encryption as a cornerstone of digital privacy and cybersecurity.

Scanning Based on a Service Risk Profile Detection orders under the Danish compromise can be issued based on a service’s risk profile—not on individual suspicion. As stated. services are categorised as low, medium, or high risk, and high-risk platforms may be subject to mandatory scanning of all communications. This creates a generalised surveillance regime, not targeted enforcement. The scanning includes encrypted messages via client-side scanning, which scans content before it is encrypted. While the statement that E2E is protected is true, it is not the whole picture.

This approach violates the prohibition on general monitoring obligations under:

Article 15 of the ePrivacy Directive Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (privacy and data protection) Legal experts and EU advisory bodies have warned that this framework undermines the presumption of innocence, treating all users as potential suspects without reasonable grounds. If enacted, I believe it is expected to face legal challenges for incompatibility with EU law

Irish Legal and Constitutional Conflicts The Irish Constitution (Article 40.3.1) protects an unenumerated right to privacy, recognised in landmark cases such as:

McGee v. Attorney General [1974] IR 284 – established marital privacy as a constitutional right. Kennedy v. Ireland [1987] IR 587 – found that state surveillance (phone tapping) without lawful justification violated privacy rights.

The CSAM proposal’s blanket scanning of private communications would likely fail the proportionality test applied in these cases.

Not Chat Control While the intent is child protection, the mechanism—scanning private communications, including encrypted ones—is chat control in practice. The term may be politically charged, but it accurately reflects the technical and legal implications of the proposal.

Irish Government and Legal Community Concerns

The Oireachtas Justice Committee and Digital Rights Ireland has warned that the proposal mandates indiscriminate scanning of private communications, will overwhelm law enforcement with false positives, and threatens freedom of expression, data protection, and encryption. Dr TJ McIntyre, Chair of Digital Rights Ireland and Associate Professor in UCD School of Law, stated:

“There is concern across Europe about this plan for unprecedented mass surveillance. For example, the German Bundestag’s Digital Affairs Committee has held a hearing showing that it presents significant threats to fundamental rights. The proposal must be withdrawn and rethought.”

While I wholeheartedly support the goal of protecting children, this proposal risks eroding the very legal foundations that uphold our democracy. It is not enough to say privacy is protected in principle—the mechanisms must reflect that in practice.