The Dublin MEP, Ms Mary Banotti, has called for adequate resources to be made available to the Garda to investigate trade in child pornography in Ireland.
Congratulating RTÉ on Monday night's Prime Time programme, she said it showed "clear evidence that real children in real time are being abused in this way".
The director of the One in Four Group, Mr Colm O'Gorman, found it remarkable that there was so little in reaction to the programme about a mother being told that "the only way to protect her children was to emigrate".
He was very concerned at how badly gardaí and the DPP had handled the case. "If anyone believed our failures where child protection is concerned are historic, it [Prime Time] proved demonstrably this is not so. We have to get to grips with it," he said.
He believed people still had problems accepting that such abuse could happen, especially involving groups, and said this was a probable reason for the laxity of approach when it came to investigating it.
Such was the nature and degree of abuse in the case reported that, even when the mother removed her children abroad, the likelihood was that the abusers continued with other children, he said. Such abusers posed a grave danger, he said.
The Children at Risk in Ireland (CARI) foundation, which took part in the programme, yesterday called for tougher sentencing and treatment for those trading child-abuse images on the Internet. It also called for long-term therapeutic support for abused children.
