The Online Safety Monitor from the Children's Rights Alliance has warned that failing to have adequate protections creates space for predators to hide.
The new report on internet safety has called for greater online protections for children.
It analyses the protections that are currently in place and highlights the areas where children in Ireland remain vulnerable online.
It includes a series of recommendations, and sets out a plan for ongoing monitoring as children's online rights continue to evolve.
The Online Safety Monitor calls on the Government to establish an effective and accessible individual complaints mechanism where complaints made by children or involving a child are given priority.
It recommends strengthening the oversight of platform compliance with the EU's set of online safety rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas such as safety-by-design, transparency, privacy and algorithms.
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The report also urges the Government to lead reform of EU laws that combat the production, hosting, access and use of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and ensure these laws properly address grooming, encryption, detection and secure storage of both new and existing CSAM.
The monitor was launched at an event in Dublin which was addressed by Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan.
Mr O’Callaghan said he accepted that much more needs to be done to ensure that children are safe online.
"When you look at the instances of child sexual abuse material that's online, you really see that we need a whole of Government approach," Mr O’Callaghan said.
"But as well as that, we need an international approach, and that's why it's so important that we have an EU recast directive in terms of combating child sexual abuse, and also that the EU continues to work on a regulation to ensure that that the service providers have greater obligations imposed on them when it comes to taking down this abusive material," he added.
In recent years, Ireland has introduced the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, a dedicated Online Safety Commissioner and the legally binding Online Safety Code, which threatens platforms with heavy fines for failing to keep users safe.
"The Online Safety Codes offer the first real chance to ensure there are significant consequences for platforms doing too little to safeguard children but in their current form, they give too much scope to platforms to determine their own safety standards," said Noeline Blackwell, Online Safety Coordinator with the Children’s Rights Alliance.
"The recommender algorithms these companies designed that feed children harmful content are not included.
"On top of that, children and young people are still waiting for an accessible individual complaints mechanism that they can turn to when they do experience harms online," Ms Blackwell said.
