A Senator has proposed that people should have to submit their passport numbers when signing up to an Internet Provider.

Eamon Coghlan has told the Oireachtas Communications Committee that asking people for their passport numbers or getting them to "pay to post" on social media could help tackle the issue of anonymity and cyber-bullying.

The Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte has also told the Committee that companies like Facebook should be willing to have sensible protocols on taking down offensive material.

Senator Coghlan had a number of suggestions when it comes to tackling anonymity.

"If somebody is to sign up to seek an IP address should they give their passport number, should they give their credit card number?" he said.

"If somebody wants to post something on the internet, should they actually pay to post something on the internet - whereby trying to avoid people not posting something because it's now going to cost them something" he added.

"There has to be some controls"

While Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames raised the issue of someone's Facebook account being changed by someone else and said teenagers are literally living in a parallel universe.

"Where a youngster has their status opened and another person puts a message on there as if they wrote it - and that message could be, for example, sexual. It goes out into the world as if they said it" she said.

"This type of thing has to stop - there has to be some controls put here".

"What about sexting? Where they're texting sexual images" she added.

The government announced its national broadband plan in August.