The proposal submitted in this amendment has reference to the principal Act. There it is enacted by Section 3, sub-section (1):—
"There shall be established a Censorship of Films Appeal Board consisting of nine Commissioners, of whom one shall be Chairman."
In sub-section (6) of the same section it is set out:—
Four members of the Appeal Board personally present shall form a quorum for the hearing of appeals and the decision of the majority of the members present shall be the decision of the Appeal Board, save that, whenever such a majority is less than four, or the members present are equally divided, the appeal shall be re-heard in the presence of not less than seven members of the Appeal Board and the decision of the majority of the members present at such re-hearing shall be the decision of the Appeal Board, but if, on such re-hearing, the members present are equally divided, the decision of the official censor shall be affirmed.
My amendment is in essence a proposal to increase the number of the Appeal Board from nine to twelve, and then it deals with the quorum—that three shall be personally present together at a re-view of a film picture. By the way, "review" is what is printed on the Order Paper here. By my mistake it was written thus, and not as it was intended, "re-view." In sub-section (2) of the amendment, I propose on the Paper to repeal sub-section (1). What I should have written was sub-section (6), which is a wholly different matter. If you, sir, would allow me to make that correction now, clause 2 of the amendment would read: "Sub-section (6) of Section 3 of the principal Act is hereby repealed."
In his last observations on Friday, the Minister hinted to the Dáil, in unmistakable terms, that he would resist this amendment—or at any rate, part of it. That came as no shock or thunderbolt to me. I was aware of that in an indefinite way since the beginning of January. The House is probably not aware that a year's experience of the working of the Act gave to some of those who were concerned in it practically new lights on certain aspects of it, and prompted them to suggest alterations. Since the discussion on Friday I looked up my correspondence with the Ministry and I find that so early as the 4th November I was making representations as to the necessity for certain changes. For example, here is a letter from the Department of Justice, dated 4th November, 1924. It says, in part:—
As regards your remarks concerning the need for censorship of posters displayed outside cinemas, I am to say that the Censorship of Films Act, 1923, does not make any provision for such censorship.
Of course it did not. That was the reason why the need for new legislation for the purpose was pointed out. Then again, I have a later letter in November, which states:—
I am directed by the Minister for Justice to state that he has carefully considered recent representations made by you regarding the difficulties in connection with the working of the Censorship of Films Act, 1923. He is making arrangements for a draft amending Bill to be prepared for introduction in the near future.
That is the present measure.
The amending Bill will prescribe penalties for any breach of regulations,
And then the letter concludes in this courteous fashion:
The Minister would, however, be glad to receive any further observations you may care to offer on any points that may have occurred to you.
On December 23rd—a most inopportune date—I wrote to the Minister:
In regard to the amendments to be effected in the Censorship of Films Act by your proposed Amending Act, I should be glad to have an opportunity of putting you in possession of various matters that experience of the actual working of the Act has brought under our notice. One thing especially I desire to emphasise—the number of the Board and its composition make it very difficult to comply with Section 3, sub-section (6):
That is the section I propose in this amendment to repeal—
namely—four members of the Appeal Board personally present, shall form a quorum for the hearing of appeals and the decision of the majority of the members present shall be the decision of the Appeal Board save
I would ask the attention of the House to this exception:
that whenever such majority is less than four or the members present are equally divided, the appeal shall be re-heard in the presence of not less than seven members of the Appeal Board."
This was the difficulty with which the Chairman of the Appeal Board was confronted. Members of the Dáil are probably not aware that under the regulations of the Department of Justice, when a renter has failed to receive a certificate for his film-picture from the censor, he is, within the meaning of the principal Act, an aggrieved person, and he notifies the Chairman of the Appeal Board that he proposes to appeal against the decision of the censor, and he thereupon lodges with the Chairman of the Board a fee of £5. The Chairman then notifies the Secretary of the Appeal Board and, with his assistance, proceeds to try to get together a quorum within the requirements of sub-section (6).
That is where the difficulty begins. It is certainly not where the difficulty ends. There are nine members. I do not think that on any occasion the nine were together. They are all very busy people. They have other occupations, and despite the fact that they are all, I presume, persons of public spirit and interested in serving the State, it is very difficult for them to reconcile their own professional obligations and to regulate their time to suit the special requirements of this situation. I say "the special requirements of this situation," because it not infrequently happens—not infrequently in proportion to the total number—that a film renter informs me that he desires to appeal, and begs of me to get the appeal heard at the earliest moment. Believing that his film was irreproachable, spotless, he has already booked it. Possibly the best I can do to get together a meeting of the Appeal Board is to have them to meet on Saturday. That film is advertised to be displayed in a cinema on Monday and in some other place on Friday, let us say. It is of the utmost concern to the renter of the film, and to the exhibitors, to get the appeal heard but how are they to be expedited? The trouble all falls on the one member of the Board, the Chairman of the Board. He is obliged to convene the meeting.
I had better state, perhaps, who the members of the Appeal Board are, and then the House will realise this is a very natural difficulty. First of all, there is a Catholic clergyman who, on the days that most of the others are free, is occupied with his religious duties. He is in a very busy and a very difficult parish, Marlboro' Street. Then the other clergyman, Canon Drury, is a Professor of Theology in the Theological School in Trinity College, and for a large part of the academic year he has lectures on Saturday morning. Then we have two professional men, doctors—Dr. Gogarty, and a member of this House, Dr. Myles Keogh. During the forenoon they are completely occupied. It is out of the question to hear the appeal then. There are two representatives of the feminine judgment in these matters, Senator Mrs. Wyse-Power and Maire Ni Chinnéide. There is also the Chairman. Now, I notified the Minister to the effect that the number of the Board and its composition made it very difficult to comply with Section 3, Sub-Section (6). On one occasion I waited from the hour appointed for the meeting—that is, 10.30 a.m.—to 1.30 p.m., and had to send away the film renter's representative, who was in despair, because he had the picture booked for a few days later. I got each member of the Board to state which day of the week and which hour would suit best. The result proves the impossibility of ever having the nine members together. It simply could not be done. The only remedy is either to increase the number of members of the Board or do away with this requirement.
Observe how Sub-Section (6) works out. We will suppose there are four members present. They must be unanimous if there are only four. If there are five members present, and one will not vote, or, as is sometimes the case, goes out to avoid the responsibility of voting, then the other four must vote the identical opinion. Suppose there are seven present, and one of them will not vote, and that the six others are equally divided. Again there is no decision. The Chairman has no casting vote, naturally enough; he has sufficient responsibility without that. Now, that is really how it works out. I do not want to press the point that the Board is an unpaid Board, because I do not believe that has actually any appreciable effect upon the difficulty of getting a full meeting.
But as I pointed out in dealing with the first amendment, it is a very responsible position. It is worse; it is a thankless position. I do not want to indicate any difference of opinion among the existing members, but we will suppose a case. The principal Act very rightly gives no indication in specific terms as to what sort of film must of necessity be refused a certificate. In other countries there are such regulations. I brought the Film Year Book of the United States several days during the time when the measure was on the Orders of the Day for Second Reading. I had hoped to have an opportunity to show some of the very strict and very rigid requirements of Australia, Canada, Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Oregon, etc. But we in the Free State have what I believe is a much better method. There are broad indications in the principal Act. If the film, it says, "is indecent, obscene, or blasphemous," and then each film is dealt with on its own merits both by the censor and later, if it comes before the Board of Appeal, by the members of the Board. But the view generally entertained by the Board is that we have nothing whatever to do with vulgarity, as such, or with the artistic or inartistic character, as such, that we are merely to consider the probable effect of the exhibition of this picture to a general audience upon a miscellaneous set of spectators. We conjecture as to what would be the probable effect in regard to morality, whether or not it would lower the standard of moral judgment or exhibit bad example, or whether it would be in any vague way subversive of public morality.
We will suppose I hold the view that there are certain forms of vulgarity in what are known in the trade as the slap-stick type of comedy, and that by debasing the taste these inevitably affect the moral standards as well. Assume I take up that attitude, and another member of the Board says: "No, this is only vulgar fooling; it is clowning, and it will please a very large number of audiences, especially of children; let it go." Or again, another member of the Board says:—"I object to this picture; there is a great deal of suffering exhibited in it, barbarity to animals or to women or children; it is hideous, it is horrible; I will not permit that." Then another member of the Board contests that view, and says that that has nothing to do with morality, it is merely concerned in what is painful to the feelings, and so on. We can well appreciate how long a discussion of that kind could occupy, and how difficult in the end it would be to get a unanimous verdict from four. For the most part, at the end, when the real verdict comes to be pronounced, there are very rarely more than four present. The differences of opinion are almost infinite in certain regards. I could give actual cases of that, but I do not like to delay the House. I feel that if I did give concrete examples, I could make a better case.
I do not really care whether the Minister refuses to increase the number of the Board or not, provided that he will abolish this stricter requirement as regards re-hearing. I purposely introduced new phraseology in the amendment, where I refer to a re-view, because the House will notice that in the principal Act what is spoken of is "hearing an appeal." Hearing an appeal is very easily understood in the case of a contention or dispute, either with regard to law or facts or both. But what is in question here is the seeing of a story, exhibited by means of photography—photographs of actors —and what is to be discussed is: should this picture be given a certificate entitling it to be exhibited in public? So what is absolutely requisite is that the members of the Appeal Board should see the picture and it is also necessary that they should see it at the same time. Although that seems a petty point, in practice I can assure you it is not, because the speed at which the film is exhibited by the operator makes an important difference. For instance, sometimes the censor or the Appeal Board will stipulate that as regards what is called the sub-title—that is the written matter—there is something in it which ought to go out. Yet if much of the scene to which it belongs is not there and is not understood, the whole development of the story is unintelligible. What is agreed upon is that some of that acting situation shall be cut out and the reading matter shall be shown at a rapid speed—as a mere flicker. I will return to that later, with your permission.