The UK publishers of the Weekly Sport newspaper lost their High Court application yesterday for an order requiring the Censorship of Publications Board to reveal the identity of persons who had complained the paper contained indecent or obscene material.
Mr Justice Kearns accepted the State's submission that the identity of the person who complained was irrelevant, as was the consideration that any complainant might be either a crank or competitor.
The judge said the complainant was in much the same position as a member of the public who draws the attention of a garda to the presence and location of what they believed was an illegally parked vehicle.
The investigation was entirely a matter for the police officer and the initial complainant effectively drops out of the picture.
If his analogy was correct, the motives of the complainant, malicious or otherwise had no role in what might subsequently transpire, the judge added.
Melton Enterprises Ltd had alleged that two persons whose identities they did not know had made complaints about the contents of the Weekly Sport.
In a letter to the board, one of the unnamed complainants alleged "obviously the 'Sport' name is used to get, among other things, an impact on young boys so they will be caught by the prostitution thing from an early age".