An Irish database of child pornography, which helped catch scores of paedophiles around the world, has found its perfect home at Interpol, its founder claimed tonight.
Ms Rachel O'Connell, who worked to establish the world-renowned database COPINE
to help identify the children in abusive pictures on the internet, said researchers had always aimed to make it an international tool.
"The database has gone off to Anders Persson in Interpol, that is its natural home. It is best placed there, that is where you are going to get the best value out of a resource like that," Ms O'Connell said.
The hefty database was transferred a few months ago from its base in University College Cork to the international police organisation Interpol's offices in France, where European and international police forces can access the acclaimed library.
Mr Persson, a criminal intelligence officer, with Interpol is now continuing work on the database with a team of people in the bureau concerned with the trafficking of human beings.
Interpol has taken over funding the Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe (COPINE) project.
A spokesman for UCC said: "It was not a funding issue and the most logical home for it was Interpol. The original funds were to cover research development, it was never about the database but it became a necessary output in order to do the research."
COPINE, headed by Professor Max Taylor, has catalogued hundreds of thousands of important images since it was first set-up in 1998 at UCC as an EU funded project.
Prof Taylor and his small team are continuing research in the same field from their base in UCC.
Ms O'Connell, who is now the director of the Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire, said: "Interpol are very pleased to have it.
"That was always what we had anticipated would happen to it. It is a wonderful reflection upon how significant and important a resource it is. It is nice that Interpol would take your work."
The database was used by the Garda in Operation Amethyst, which helped find many well-known Irish people guilty of downloading child pornography.
Researchers also collaborated with Greater Manchester Police and to track a 24-year-old British man on suspicion of abusing numerous young boys and producing abusive images of children.
"It is an example of how the internet has facilitated the trans-national growth of paedophile activity.
"It changes the whole policing perspective, the internet has no regard for jurisdiction which means they have to have cooperation."
PA