Social media users in Ireland may soon need a state-run digital wallet app to continue accessing sites such as Facebook (NASDAQ: META), Instagram, and X under new government plans for 2026 aimed at safeguarding children online.
In a January 3 interview with local outlet Extra.ie, Irish Communications Minister Patrick O’Donovan outlined the proposed new measure as part of a government plan to clamp down on the “severe public health issue” of children accessing inappropriate material online.
New legislation is expected later in 2026 that will mandate social media companies to integrate age verification using the government-designed app, MyGovID, which functions as a digital wallet that stores official documents, such as the Public Services Card and driving license.
Rumors of the proposed plan emerged early in December 2025, getting a mixed reception from some civil liberties groups. Yet, as of his interview this week, it appears O’Donovan remains set on going ahead with the plan.
“You don’t allow children unregulated access to something that poses a clear public health risk,” said O’Donovan. “There aren’t too many children sitting up at the bar counter… sucking their doodie and sipping their martinis.”
He added that the process might take three or four minutes to download.
O’Donovan’s announcement comes a few months after Ireland successfully completed a pilot of its national digital identity wallet, MyGovID, which now looks set for an official launch by the end of 2025.
The proposed move also follows Australia’s November 2025 ban on under-16s using major social media services, including TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and Threads. Citing similar concerns to those mentioned by O’Donovan, the Australian Government said its goal was to reduce the negative impact of social media’s design features that “encourage [young people] to spend more time on screens, while also serving up content that can harm their health and wellbeing”.
Under the Irish plan, adults who refuse to install the app could lose access to their existing social media accounts, and non-compliant companies could face hefty fines, enforceable through Ireland’s media regulator Coimisiún na Meán or the European Commission for EU-based firms.
A pilot of the scheme is set to launch soon, with O’Donovan reportedly receiving positive feedback from a recent meeting with Meta. He urged other platforms, such as TikTok and X, to also collaborate.
“I would prefer to be in a situation where I didn’t need to do this at all, where companies themselves would have put in robust age verification systems, and there was no requirement on us to do this, but they didn’t, and it looks like some of them won’t,” O’Donovan said.
When the rumors of the plan first emerged last December, they were met with a less-than-enthusiastic response from privacy advocates in the country.
Data privacy backlash
On December 8, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) jointly issued a press release expressing concern about the MyGovID proposals and urging the government to clarify its digital ID check plan for social media users as a matter of urgency.
“These reports suggest the Minister wants every adult and child in Ireland over the age of 15 to present a MyGovID whenever they want to post on social media. On what legal basis?” Asked Joe O’Brien, Executive Director of ICCL. “These digital IDs require a Public Services Card, and child safety cannot be successfully secured through the use of a database that has been found to be illegal.”
He added that “this kind of disproportionate response to a very real issue veers into the realm of authoritarianism. We need a much broader public discussion.”
This sentiment was shared by Dr. TJ McIntyre, Chair of Digital Rights Ireland, who commented that “giving government data about identity to social media platforms will give them even more information about individuals than they have already.”
“It would also mean, in effect, that users could no longer browse the Internet with any degree of anonymity,” warned McIntyre. “Connecting the social media and advertising companies’ databases to MyGovID would mean that every web page access could be traced back to a specific Irish holder of a Public Services Card.”
In his interview with Extra.ie on Saturday, communication Minister O’Donovan dismissed these concerns, arguing that “there is no other right that trumps the right of a child to be protected and no amount of convincing of me that data protection is more important than child protection is ever going to win out.”
He added that “at the end of the day, if the companies have a social conscience and are interested in the protection of children online… I don’t see why anybody who wouldn’t be trading in Ireland, not just domiciled in Ireland, wouldn’t adopt the format that we’re proposing.”
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Source: https://coingeek.com/ireland-may-require-state-run-digital-wallet-to-access-social-media/
