Temple Carrig Teacher Shocking Smartphone Research To Dáil

Eoghan Cleary at the Dáil TUES27JAN26

atest press release from Jennifer Whitmore TD, issued on Tuesday, January 27th 2026…

Social Democrats TD for Wicklow, Jennifer Whitmore, has applauded Wicklow teacher Eoghan Cleary for a shocking and impactful presentation to Dáil and Seanad members this week.

Mr Cleary is the Assistant Principal of Templecarrig Secondary School in Greystones, where he teaches wellbeing to students, amongst other things. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, works with the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute, and he is involved with GenFree, a campaign to protect children online.

“The work that Eoghan Cleary does with his students is phenomenal. He has created a classroom environment where young people feel safe enough to speak honestly about what they encounter online, and what he has learned from them is deeply alarming,” Deputy Whitmore explained.

“Eoghan explained to Oireachtas members that students routinely come forward with stories of being confronted with extreme and disturbing material on their smartphones, material that no child should be exposed to.”

“He presented data that he has collected from students regarding the exposure of young people to violent and abusive material online, and how this shapes their understanding of relationships, sexuality and consent long before they have developed the maturity to process it. Their exposure to explicit content is normalising harmful behaviours.”

“He revealed that children as young as nine are being targeted with pornography – before they have even had their first sexual thought. There is a huge risk with children’s earliest lessons about sexuality increasingly coming from pornography and algorithm driven content online, and this is seen with the rise in harmful attitudes and behaviours among young people. They are being left to navigate an unregulated online word before they have even developed the critical skills to decipher whether what they are seeing is real or not.”

Eoghan has seen the targeting of children by AI girlfriends and boyfriends. There are hundreds of websites that offer this service for free, without age verification and without even needing to make an account linked to email. In some cases, the website encourages you upload a reference image to base your bot off of, much like what we saw in recent weeks with Grok. These bots will say what you want them to say, you can choose your relationship with them – stepmother and step sister often being offered – and if you don’t know what you want them to say, they will offer you prompts, often degrading and violent.

“Children are being shaped by an online world that was never designed to protect them, Eoghan outlined that in very clear terms. Without strong national regulation, the burden has been falling on educators and parents to speak up about what young people are experiencing, that has to change. The Government needs to start treating this like the threat that it is and start protecting our children online.

“Thank you so much to Eoghan for the amazing work that he does both in Templecarrig and nationally for children.”