ANCIENT Irish laws inspired by a “Committee on Evil Literature” to ban books are set to be scrapped as the Government believes there is no longer a need for this type of censorship.
Under the Censorship of Publications Act, a Censorship Board was created and banned more than 12,000 books and magazines in Ireland since 1930.
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The law as it stands allows for the “prohibition of books and periodicals that are considered indecent or obscene or have an unduly large proportion of space devoted to crime.”
The original legislation to ban books was recommended by a State body called the “Committee on Evil Literature” which was appointed in 1926 shortly after the foundation of the State.
However, with a significant drop in the number of complaints about books being made in Ireland, the Censorship Board has effectively ceased operations in the last 20 years.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee has gotten Cabinet approval to draw up legislation that would repeal the Censorship of Publications Act.
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The Minister told Cabinet colleagues that there are other sufficiently robust provisions in place to deal with the publication of threatening or abusive material.
She said the repeal of the censorship would not impact the prosecution of offences for the publication of child abuse material or circulating threatening material.
And she said it would not impact the regulation of online material through the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022.
Ireland’s archaic censorship laws have also come in for international scrutiny from the UN through the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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In 2014, Fianna Fail called for the Censorship of Publications Board to be scrapped.
TD Niall Collins said: “No publication has been banned in Ireland since the year 2000.
“The one and only time in the last five years that the board received a complaint was in relation to Minister Shatter’s novel Laura.
“Ironically, this gave the book more publicity and probably led to an increase in sales”.
The censorship board had at the time returned a copy of Mr Shatter’s book to the complainant, with a letter advising that it did not see any problem with its content and that “(the board) decided that no action would be taken against the publisher”.