Online harassment in Ireland is dealt with by two systems at once, and the mistake most people make is to use only one of them. The criminal law, through Coco’s Law and the harassment offence in the 1997 Act, punishes the sender. The civil law, through defamation, privacy and data protection, removes the content, declares it false, identifies the account and compensates the person targeted. The Garda route runs alongside a civil claim, not instead of it, and only the civil claim has a deadline measured in months. This page explains both, starting with what was sent, by whom, and when.
Online Harassment Ireland: The Criminal Offences
The Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, known as Coco’s Law, commenced on 10 February 2021 and created three offences that cover most of what people now mean by online abuse: distributing or publishing an intimate image of another person with intent to cause harm (section 2); distributing or publishing an intimate image without that intent (section 3); and sending threatening or grossly offensive messages (section 4). Harassment itself is older and wider. Section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 makes it an offence to harass another person by persistently communicating with them in a way that seriously interferes with their peace and privacy or causes alarm, distress or harm, and a campaign of messages, tags, comments and fake accounts is the conduct the section describes.
A complaint under any of these goes to the Gardaí, who investigate, and the State prosecutes. The outcome, if the case gets that far, is a conviction and a sentence for the sender. What it does not do is take the content down, declare it untrue, identify an anonymous account for the purposes of your own claim, or pay you anything. The fuller account of the three offences is in our guide to Coco’s Law and online harassment.
The Garda Route Runs Alongside a Civil Claim
Make the Garda complaint. Make it early, with the evidence organised, and keep a record of when it was made and who is dealing with it. Then understand its limits. You are a witness in a criminal investigation, not a party to it; the pace is set by the investigation, not by you; and nothing in that process stops the clock on your civil claim. Where the abuse includes false statements of fact, the defamation limitation period under section 38 is one year from first publication, extendable to a maximum of two only where the interests of justice require it, and the courts apply that strictly. A Garda complaint is not a specified alternative dispute resolution procedure under Part 4B of the Defamation Act, so it does not suspend that year. People who wait for the criminal process to finish before taking civil advice can find that the civil claim expired while they waited.
The two routes use the same evidence, which is the practical reason to run them together: screenshots with the URL, date and time visible, the account name or handle, who saw or shared the content and any proof of that, and a note of the date you first became aware of it. Preserve them before reporting, because a successful platform report removes the content and, with it, your ability to capture it.
When Online Abuse Is Also Defamation
Most campaigns of online abuse contain statements of fact, and most of those are false: that you are a thief, a fraud, a cheat, an abuser. Each is a defamatory statement under section 6 of the Defamation Act 2009 if it tends to injure your reputation in the eyes of reasonable members of society, was published to at least one person other than you, and identifies you. Pure insult is different. A message that you are worthless and the sender hopes you suffer is section 4 material for the Gardaí, but it states no fact about you and is not defamation. Separating the two is the first job in any consultation, because it decides which remedies are available.
For the defamatory statements, the Circuit Court, with its jurisdiction of €75,000, can grant a declaratory order under section 28 that the statement was false and defamatory, a correction order under section 30, a prohibition order under section 33 against further publication and damages under section 31. For an anonymous account, section 45 lets the Circuit Court order the platform or host to disclose identifying information where the interests of justice require it, and may order you to pay the intermediary’s costs; before March 2026 that needed a High Court Norwich Pharmacal application. Section 11 gives one cause of action for all publications of the same statement, so the clock runs from the first post, not the latest repost. The platform-by-platform route is set out on our online and social media defamation page, and the Defamation Claim Checker runs the elements against your facts.
Breach of Privacy in Ireland: The Civil Claim
Defamation only reaches false statements. A great deal of online harassment publishes things that are true and were never anyone else’s to publish: intimate images, private messages, a home address, the contents of a relationship. Irish law recognises a right to privacy, and in general terms a civil claim lies where private information is published without justification, whether or not it is accurate. Truth, the complete defence to defamation under section 16, is no answer to a privacy claim; the wrong is the disclosure itself. The court can be asked to restrain further publication and to compensate for what has already been published. Intimate images are the clearest case: they engage the privacy claim and the section 2 and section 3 offences at the same time, so the Garda complaint and the civil letter go out together.
Data Protection: Erasure and Delisting
Your name, image and the details published about you are personal data, and data protection law adds a third set of tools. A right to erasure request under Article 17 of the GDPR can be made to the platform or site holding the content, and the same Article can be used to seek the delisting of search results against your name. The limit is a practical one: the Data Protection Commission has treated delisting on defamation grounds as difficult without a court finding. The practical sequence, therefore, is a section 28 declaratory order from the Circuit Court first and the delisting request second, with the order attached. Our guide to the right to be forgotten and Google delisting sets out the request and what it can and cannot achieve.
Platforms, the Digital Services Act and Coimisiún na Meán
Report to the platform first, after the evidence is preserved. Since 17 February 2024 the Digital Services Act has required platforms to run notice-and-action systems, so a properly made report must be dealt with. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland’s Digital Services Coordinator and enforces the Online Safety Code for video-sharing platforms, which is the escalation point when a platform does not act. Keep the report reference and the platform’s reply: they are evidence that the intermediary was on notice, which matters when a solicitor’s letter follows and when a section 45 application is made.
What a Harassment Solicitor Does First
Sorts the content into its legal categories: the false statements of fact that are defamation, the private material that is privacy, the threats and images that are offences, and the insult that is none of these. Preserves the evidence in a form a court will accept. Supports the Garda complaint. Reports to the platform and escalates where the report is ignored. Sends the letter seeking removal, an undertaking against repetition and, where the words are defamatory, a correction and apology, which closes many matters on its own. Where the account is anonymous, applies under section 45. And where a claim has to be issued, advises on the alternative dispute resolution options as section 34K requires, files the statutory declaration, chooses the court, and explains the costs risk in writing: court proceedings carry a risk of being ordered to pay the other side’s costs if the claim fails. One consultation, at a fixed fee set out on our fees page, establishes which routes the evidence supports and the date by which the civil claim must issue.
Being Targeted Online? Start With the Evidence
Bring the screenshots, the account names and the dates. One consultation establishes which of the criminal, defamation, privacy and data protection routes your evidence supports, and the date you must issue by.
Call 01 5827148