Number of 'Coco's Law' prosecutions last year rises by over 40%
Gordon Deegan
The number of prosecutions taken by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) under Coco’s Law, which bans the sharing of intimate images without a person’s consent, last year increased by 41.5 per cent to 75.
New ODPP figures provided by the Minister for Justice, Migration and Home Affairs, Jim O’Callaghan TD, show that a total of 240 'Coco’s Law' prosecutions have been taken since the law came into force in 2021.
The figures show that the 75 cases taken last year by the ODPP follow 53 cases taken in 2024.
Already this year, a further 12 cases have been taken, and the 75 cases in 2025 is almost double the 43 cases taken in 2023.
The number of cases taken in 2022 totalled 4,9 and eight in 2021.
Those found convicted of offences under Coco’s Law can face prison terms of up to three years in the circuit court.
Last month, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin (FF) stated that Coco’s Law may need to be strengthened following the alarming rise in the use of artificial intelligence to generate offensive content.
In his written Dáil reply to Cork North Central TD, Padraig O’Sullivan (FF), O’Callaghan said that the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, also known as Coco’s Law, came into force in February 2021.
Along with criminalising the sharing of, or threatening to share, intimate images without a person’s consent, the Act also seeks to target other areas of harmful communications by creating a new offence of distributing, publishing, or sending a threatening or grossly offensive communication with intent to cause harm.
Minister O’Callaghan said that prosecutions are a matter for the ODPP, which is entirely independent in its remit.
In one Coco’s Law case brought by the ODPP before the courts last year, a 20-year old Co Clare man was returned for trial to Ennis Circuit Court, where he is accused of posting a collage of intimate images of a 15-year-old girl onto his Snapchat stories.
In this case, the man is charged with three alleged offences over the posting of the intimate images in November 2022, when the accused had just turned 18.
