It follows widespread outrage earlier this month when a defence barrister in a rape trial suggested the jury should consider the 17-year-old accuser's "thong with a lace front" on the night of the incident.
The case in County Cork, in which the 27-year-old man was acquitted, was brought to wider attention last week when MP Ruth Coppinger held up a thong in Ireland's parliament to show her anger with the handling of rape cases.
She said: "It might seem embarrassing to show a pair of thongs here… how do you think a rape victim or a woman feels at the incongruous setting of her underwear being shown in a court?"
Women across the world started sharing pictures of their underwear on social media using the hashtag: #ThisIsNotConsent.
Lacy underwear was strung from the Spire on Dublin’s O’Connell Street and laid on the steps of the courthouse in Cork.
Protests have continued today as women walked down Dublin's Grafton Street in their underwear in support of victims of sexual violence.
Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, said the government should examine how alleged victims of rape were treated during trials.
He said: "Let there be no doubt that nobody asks to be raped and it is never the fault of the victim.
"It doesn't matter what someone wears, where someone went, who they went with or whether they took drugs or alcohol.
"Nobody who is a victim of sexual violence or rape is ever to blame for the crime committed on them. I believe any defence on those lines is reprehensible."
He also said changes may be made "so people can't produce some of these defences which I think all of us find quite sickening".
Sinn Fein has signalled it will submit an amendment to a sexual offences bill that would ban references to women's clothing during rape trials.
Noeline Blackwell, the head of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said: "The reference to the girl’s underwear and the assumption and inference that the jury was being invited to draw – that because she was dressed like that she was asking for sex – does not surprise us.
“It comes up very, very regularly how someone was dressed, the amount of drink they had taken, why they hadn’t screamed if they were in trouble.
"These kind of mythologies and stereotypes around rape come up again and again in court cases, because the defence to rape is that the sex was consensual.
"So anything the defendant can do to suggest there was consent will be used."
Mary Crilly, of the Cork Sexual Violence Centre, added: "Rape is a crime of power, it’s a crime of violence – it has nothing to do with what the person was wearing."
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