This, of course, is an eternal subject which has exercised many minds over many years—the minds of St. Paul, Milton, and Deputies —but, to put the matter into perspective, what we are doing in this Bill and in the amendments is rationalising censorship and making it appear to be and operate as a sensible system. I would, as I think every Deputy would, defend the principle of a censorship code. One must have a means of protecting people against evil literature which can be just as damaging as drugs. I think everybody in this House would agree we must have a censorship code.
I think our system, which has evolved over the years under all Governments, is a very good one. As I said on Second Reading, other countries are beginning to move towards some such system as we have, where you have a consistent system of censorship under a Board which applies a consistent set of criteria in its assessment of publications. To my mind, the system we have is far superior to that which operates in a number of other countries, where control is operated through the courts and is subject to the varying notions of different police prosecutors and magistrates as to what is and is not obscene.
That system is not as good as ours; in fact, there is no country in the world that does not operate a system of control on publications of one form or another. Our system is quite good and the only reason I introduced this Bill was to remove anomalies which I could see quite plainly existed in it, and to rationalise the system so that it would appear to be, and would in fact be, a system of censorship that in 1967, and in the future, would command the respect of all right-thinking people. This is what impelled me to bring in this Bill in the first instance. There was one very grave anomaly in this system as it operated heretofore, that is, that once a publication was banned, it was banned for ever. This created a situation in which very many works that have come to be recognised as of fine literary merit remain banned. Many of the authors affected in this manner were very fine—Irish authors of international repute, men like Frank O'Connor and Seán Ó Faoláin. The fact that some of their books were banned has caused our system of censorship to fall into a degree of disrepute.
I should like to see the system a responsible, well respected system which can stand on its own two feet, as a rational attempt by a responsible community to restrict works of indecency. This is what censorship means; not a means of restricting forever works of literary merit which, according to certain community standards at a particular period, may not have been regarded as being fit to be read but in the changed circumstances would be generally acceptable. As Deputy Moore said, one cannot change basic morality, and there is nothing in this Bill to suggest that any book which offends basic morality will, in the future, be admitted, any more than it was in the past.
The safeguard is, of course, in section 3 which provides that any book on the lapse of a prohibition order can be re-banned for a further period. This re-banning process can continue indefinitely. But the important thing is that we safeguard from perpetual condemnation literature which may have in fact—I think it was Deputy M.J. O'Higgins used the phrase first— offended community standards at a certain period but which, of its nature, should be given the chance of being reviewed again by a censorship board, in the context of the community standards of a different age.
That is basically the thinking behind the Bill. I think it is very sensible. We have a sensible censorship board; I think any works coming before it for review will be looked at in a sensible way. Works of evil intent will be re-banned; works of literary merit, without evil intent which may have offended community standards in the past will be allowed to be read and, in this way, the system can adjust itself to attitudes.
The specific purpose of the amendments under discussion concerns the limitation period of the prohibition order. I suggested 20 years initially but all members who contributed here on Second Reading suggested a shorter period. Ten years was mentioned by, I think, every speaker as being more appropriate. I have adopted the period of 12 years. I feel that is the absolute minimum period we should adopt because it is important that we should not breach the whole idea of censorship and there would be an obvious breach of the principle of censorship if one allowed too short a limitation period. One must take it that the particular Censorship Board at the time reflects the community attitudes of the day. Obviously, community attitudes cannot change overnight. Therefore, one must select a reasonable period. I suggested 20 years initially in the Bill. I said I was completely open on the matter. I was being cautious because one can easily be wrong-footed on a sensitive matter of this kind.
