A member of the Seanad wants to ban anonymous comments on the internet.

Ned O'Sullivan wants websites to force users to register with their personal details with a national body before they can leave comments.

The Senator said it would help to clamp down on abusive comments against politicians and other people in the public eye.

The Fianna Fáil Senator said newspapers wouldn't publish anonymous letters, and websites shouldn't either.

"People in our business are advised not to question the media," he began, "but I would like to see a debate here … on the online newspaper business, and in particular the manner in which [they] provide a facility for nameless, anonymous commentators to be very critical, sometimes quite abusive of politicians in general."

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He said there should be "some form of registration and identification" for those who want to partake in such debate.

"These kind of anorak-type bloggers that appear all over the place on whatever is the issue of the day, sometimes their comments can be verging on the abusive - in terms of their language and their personal criticisms of people's appearance and so on and so forth," he said.

"I'd like to have that debated, and I'd like to see the journals in question participating in that debate."