The decision by the Censorship of Publications Board to ban the magazine In Dublin on the grounds that the issues of the publication referred to it "have usually or frequently been indecent or obscene" raises serious questions about public morality, rights to information and the board's powers and procedures. Rapid social and cultural changes in Ireland have radically changed the context within which censorship operates. This decision should provoke an overdue examination of the relevant legislation and the norms that apply to it.
It appears that the magazine has been banned because some of its advertisements for health clubs were judged to be indecent or obscene. It is also suggested that some of its covers and one other advertisement, for a condom, were found similarly offensive. The public has not been told specifically that this is so, nor precisely who referred the offending issues to the board. While the absence of this information may appear to be a trivial matter and many will anyway consider the board quite justified in its actions, it sets unacceptable precedents which make it impossible to assess the decision in detail. This positively discourages public debate. Writers, editors and publishers do not have to be told their work has been submitted to the board, nor even that it has been banned.
A forthcoming judicial review may clarify the matter, including the question of how compatible such procedures are with the right to free expression guaranteed in the Constitution. It remains open to the company concerned, KCD Dublin Ltd, to seek further information under the Freedom of Information legislation, which covers the board's activities. It is also open to the company to appeal the decision to the Censorship of Publications Appeals Board.
But there is a definite ring of the Star Chamber about the procedure involved. It is quite out of keeping with recent styles of administration and government, more open than were ever contemplated during the notorious heyday of the board after it commenced its work in 1929, when many of Ireland's best-known writers were targeted. Indeed when Mr Brian Lenihan came to review the board's mandate in the 1960s as Minister for Justice he acknowledged that "standards of propriety do change" and had done so greatly over the previous 20 years. That lesson stands for his successors in government.
At one stage, as revealed in State Papers released two years ago, Mr Lenihan raised the question of whether or not it would be better "to do away with the Censorship Acts altogether (leaving pornography to the criminal law)". That option also stands up well in the light of recent social change in Ireland. The relevant legislation fails to define obscenity and says indecency "includes suggestive of, or inciting to, sexual immorality or unnatural vice or likely in any other similar way to corrupt or deprave" - a loose definition capable of endless contestation, for example by homosexuals, whose relationships were not legalised until the 1993 Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act.
That Act also made prostitution illegal - just as its practice began to flourish as never before in independent Ireland. In Dublin's offence has been to publish advertisements for such services, which other Irish publications voluntarily refuse to do. Banning them outright drives them underground, unregulated and more subject to exploitation. Much the same argument applies to obscene and indecent material. It is better left to private decision, backed up by the criminal law and a more mature public morality than to the fiats of a secretive censorship board.