Senators will have noted that they received a fresh print of the Censorship of Publications Bill in this morning's post. The reason for this is that a printer's error was discovered in the Long Title of the print of the Bill which was in the hands of Members and it was therefore, necessary to issue a corrected print.
Censorship of Publications Bill, 1967: Second Stage (Resumed).
Can we take it that the first edition is banned?
During the first part of this debate at our sitting last week the House traversed a very wide field of topics. I do not propose to follow the other Senators in that, though it is tempting to comment on the use of four-letter words and on the use of the seven deadly sins. I would make this comment, however, on the four-letter words—we must be very careful to distinguish between manners and morals. In fact, in the past I do not think our censors have always made that most important distinction. One can be highly immoral in polysyllables. One can be highly moral in four-letter words, though, while being moral in four-letter words, one might, in certain circumstances, be very rude. I emphasise, however, that in the past books have apparently been banned more for bad manners than for bad morals.
We all, I think, in this House— perhaps with one exception—would agree that some measure of censorship is desirable and necessary. It is very much a matter of degree. Most of us, I am sorry to say, would also have to agree that in the past the measure of our censorship has been too severe. Our laws have been too restrictive; our censors have been too narrow-minded. I think one of the saddest things that happened to this country in the early years of its independence was the fact that under the new laws of our land honourable and respectable Irish writers found their names going on a list of books which were condemned as being indecent, obscene, or liable to corrupt or deprave. It was one of the saddest things that happened in the intellectual history of this country. We all regret it. We cannot do much to put it right now except by the small palliation that this Bill gives. But, we can in the future try to ensure that that kind of thing will not happen again.
We must remember too, in trying to improve legislation, that no matter what legislation we produce, in the end very much will depend on the censors themselves. One of the reasons why those grave and culpable mistakes were made in the 1930s was that the censors, in the opinion of many, were not suitable for the purpose. That condition of affairs, however, has seen a great improvement, too. Our present censors and Board of Appeal are doing a much more reasonable job and the country as a whole is grateful for that.
The present Bill is a slight improvement and, as such, I welcome it. For the rest of what I shall briefly say, I want to concentrate on one possible practical improvement in this Bill. It has been mentioned before by various Senators. I want to urge it again. It concerns the seizure of books, both banned and potentially bannable, by customs officials. This undoubtedly is a cause of scandal in the country and outside the country. It is offensive to liberal citizens of our own country, and to visitors, to find that their own personal reading is censored by people of, in some cases, not a very high literary standard, and is at times taken from them. I am assured that many of the customs officials greatly dislike this duty. It is hard enough for them to be able to deal with more material things, but that they should have to act as a kind of pre-censor in a matter of this kind is an anxiety and, to some of them, I think a source of shame. They dislike doing it. Therefore, the Minister can take it as a fact that both many citizens of this country and customs officials as a whole would welcome a relaxation of the law here.
Just what the law is it is by no means easy to determine. We had some difference of opinion in this House in the debate last week and in the columns of the Irish Times at the end of last week a statement by one of the Senators was questioned. If the Minister would do nothing else—and I hope he will do much more—would he give us a brief and clear statement exactly as to what the law is at this moment regarding the rights of customs officials to take books from innocent travellers, because innocent travellers these people are: they do not intend to sell the book; they do not intend to display it or anything of that kind. It is simply for their personal reading.
What exactly is the law in this regard? If, as I assume, the customs officials are, in fact, entitled to seize both banned books and books that may be banned. I would ask the Minister to remove this power. There is, in fact, a legal precedent for removing this power. It is found in the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, No. 6 of 1935, section 17, subsection (1). This deals with the importation of contraceptives into this country. It is a liberal clause in its way because it does allow people to import contraceptives into this country provided that they are not for the purpose of exposing them or advertising them or keeping them for sale. This was a liberal provision, for the majority of people in the country at that time—perhaps still, it is not so sure now—believed that these were immoral appliances. Yet for the sake of liberalism and of giving more freedom to the minority this provision was put in, that they were entitled to import these appliances if they wished to get them for their own personal use.
I ask the Minister would he consider doing the same for books preferably both banned books and unbanned books but if he does not see his way to doing it for banned books at least for unbanned books. It really is scandalous that any customs official with perhaps no literary training whatever can judge some professor, poet, or playwright or whatever he may be in what he should or should not read. That is the situation at the moment and it makes us a laughingstock in the learned world and the literary world. I cannot put this too strongly to the Minister. I think he knows that what I am saying is true. I would urge him to meet this, to meet it in very much the same way as this section of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act which I have quoted makes it possible, in other words, when these books are for purely personal use, to allow them in. This would remove very grave embarrassment to our visitors. It would remove a rather unfortunate duty on the customs officials. I shall not delay more on this but I will emphasise—I have mentioned it and several Senators have mentioned it—there is still a crying need for reform in this matter. I think we have got used to the machinery of the Censorship Board and the Appeal Board now.
I think most people say it is working reasonably well. But hundreds of thousands of people every year are finding it an indignity to be stopped at the airport and have their personal reading removed from them. If the Minister does not do this, I am afraid he is leaving the country open to a good deal of ill-repute in various circles. I know he is one who values the honour of the country, as well as following commonsense as he has recognised in this Bill, and I shall be very sorry now if he does not meet the House on this point. However, in general, the Bill so far as it goes, marks an improvement in our standards of civil liberty and artistic freedom, and as such it has my support.
It is difficult in this debate at this stage to say anything which has not been said in other words before. Nevertheless, there are a few points that I should like to underline before the debate concludes.
It is, I think, symptomatic that in this debate touching on the question of censorship today this House has got away from the type of debate which characterised discussion of such topics in the past. We have had in this debate a clear realisation that in problems of censorship we are not dealing with matters of absolute right and absolute wrong but we are dealing with matters of what is proper to be done in existing circumstances in this day and age.
In the course of the debate on the last day there was reference to the question of the seven deadly sins and how many of these should be the responsibility of the Minister for Justice. I should like to turn from deadly sins to cardinal virtues and suggest that our main concern in matters of this type is with the cardinal virtue of prudence because this is the essence of the censorship problem. When we have all finished making our reservations on the one hand and statements of opinion on the other, the problem that faces the Minister, the problem that faces the Legislature, the problem that faces the whole community is a question not of prudery but of prudence.
Just as prudence is a virtue for the individual, a virtue for the individual in his own moral conduct, a virtue to be practised by the parent in regard to the moral upbringing of a child, so also prudence is a public virtue to be exercised by legislatures and by governments. Indeed, this has been well recognised. Theologians talk of this virtue of public prudence, and the fact that they call it royal prudence will not mean, I hope, it will not be practised in this republican assembly. As I have said, the essence of this problem is what should be done in the circumstances of the day. There will be a tendency among people who discuss this new move of the Minister to say that he is abandoning a moral principle, that there can be no change in matters like this, that what was morally wrong in 1929 must be morally wrong today. The Minister has a good sound tradition behind him. No matter how far we go back in the debates and discussions about what should prudently be done in regard to moral problems in the public sphere, we find always the accusation that people are taking the modern liberal line—that by taking circumstances into account they are abandoning traditional morality.
We can go right back to the early centuries of the Christian era and find that St. Augustine, who now seems so old-fashioned to us, was taking a modern liberal line on subjects like this when he insisted that moral objectivity had no meaning without regard for circumstances. So, too, in the flowering of the Middle Ages, in the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas, who also seems old-fashioned today, found that the learned doctors who were the established order of the University of the Sorbonne disapproved of his liberalism so much that they condemned his propositions. So we find ourselves in respectable company when we seek to make changes such as the Minister is seeking to make here.
It is heartening in this debate to note the manner of the discussion. More than ever before the world in which we live is one world. Less than ever before can we in this country isolate ourselves; less than ever before can we say it is for us to determine in this corner of Europe, in this corner of the world, what our manner of life is to be. We are, by the circumstances of modern life, of modern transportation, of modern mass communication, more thoroughly a part of the world around us than we have ever been. We are on the point of seeking further involvement in the Europe of which we are part.
All of this means we must examine every aspect of our particular culture and customs and re-examine them from the point of view of our new involvement. The Minister has done this in one respect and he is to be congratulated on what he has done. I am one of those who feel that he has been unduly hesitant in the measure he has brought before us—that perhaps he could have gone a little further.
There are many aspects of our censorship code, many aspects of the operation of that code, which could well have been looked at. It is true to say, as Senator Sheehy Skeffington said, that even though provisions are there for appeal it is unlikely they will be used. Many years ago I was shocked, thoroughly shocked, by the banning by our Censorship Board of a book by that well-known non-pornographic author Sir Charles Snow. I immediately determined that I would get three of my colleagues to join me in our statutory right of appeal to have the banning of the book, The Light and the Dark, the life of Roy Calvert, removed. I came to this conclusion not once but many times but whenever I reached a firm conclusion I was in Cork and my colleagues were elsewhere; when they were in my company it never entered my mind. That banning was one of the more ludicrous things our Censorship Board did, something about which my colleagues and I should have done something. Here, again, the seven deadly sins entered the picture: perhaps it was sloth on my part and not any deficiency in the statutory provision that we are here questioning. That account of an academic life, that account of the career of the young man, Roy Calvert, remained under a shadow in this country. There are many things which C.P. Snow wrote in regard to academic politics and in regard to national politics dealing with matters almost beyond the bounds of decency but not in the sense of which our Censorship Board should be taking account.
I find, with other Members, that the present situation in regard to the activities of customs officers is unfortunate. I read in a newspaper this morning that one of the Revenue Commissioners spoke on this subject yesterday. He made a clear statement in which he said customs officers do not search baggage for banned books and he pointed out what they do: they search baggage and remove any banned books they find but they do not search specifically for banned books. It is something which we could well get rid of.
Anybody who wishes to bring a banned book through customs can undoubtedly do so. All he has to do is put it in his coat pocket and the book is through. Like Senator Sheehy Skeffington, I found myself once in the unfortunate position of arriving at Irish customs with a book in my baggage which I was quite unaware had incurred the displeasure of our Censorship Board. Because I was unaware of this, the book had been packed along with my pyjamas in the top of my case. As soon as the customs officer encountered it there was a flurry. I was removed to another room, there were hurried runnings to and fro, there were wonderings as to whether the airport bus should be held for me and there may have been a suggestion of whether I should be released from custody that day—a general flap. Had I been aware that the book was banned and had I been determined to bring it in, all that fuss could have been avoided.
Not only had I that book but another which should be dear to the heart of our Censorship Board—When the Kissing Had to Stop—by Constantine Fitzgibbon. The main theme of the latter book is the danger of liberal thought, of liberalism, and how they can lead to a Communist takeover. When this book was found in my baggage with the title When the Kissing Had to Stop, the customs officer was so sure this book was banned that he went three times through the list of prohibited publications with increasing disappointment and I am sure he ended up with a firm conviction that our Censorship Board, for all their activity, were not really doing their job 100 per cent effectively. Those incidents occur. As I say, the person who is determined to bring in one or two banned books can easily do so. It is the innocents like Senator Sheehy Skeffington and myself who suffer inconveniences. It may be the innocent tourist who suffers. This is something in which the present practice is certainly very far from the prudence we should all wish to see.
I congratulate the Minister on the distance he has come. I think he has been unduly cautious in what he has done. That some code of censorship is necessary for a long time to come, that pornography must be controlled, that some restriction is necessary. Those things are not really in debate. The question is what type of literary censorship, what type of treatment of travellers bringing in reading material in their personal baggage is to characterise the Ireland of the 1970s. This is the Minister's concern and that of his colleagues and I think they could, indeed, have gone further in this Bill in order to give us a fair appearance to the outside world in this respect. We must, however, be grateful and we must say to the Minister: "Thank you for what you have done."
I was Minister for Justice for quite a long time and I remember on one occasion when we had a debate here a Member of the Seanad spoke for almost seven hours. I was introducing an amending Bill dealing with censorship. I was always against censorship and I remember at that time the Irish Times used to say: “Mr. Gerald Boland has banned the following books”. They never bothered to say “the Minister for Justice”. I said at that time that if for no other reason I was going to stop that practice.
I brought in an amending Bill and I think it was shortly before the long debate on that Bill in this House that the Censorship Board came to me and asked me to agree to an amendment. The representative of Trinity College came to me and also members of the Catholic Church. The Chairman asked me to delete from the Censorship Act the proviso that we should have regard to the literary and artistic merits of any work which came before the Censorship Board.
With all due respect it is incredible that Professor Fearon should have acted in this way.
That is what happened. They did not register any disagreement. May God be thanked that there was no Censorship of Publications Act in force when the Holy Bible was written or when Byron or Shakespeare were writing. A very eminent member of the Catholic Church, whom I am glad to say is still alive, met me shortly afterwards at some function in the ProCathedral and said to me: "That was a good one for the Chairman." I think it is not a very good thing that moral standards have changed. I am still old-fashioned enough to say that if things were wrong 50 years ago they are wrong today.
The Censorship Act.
We have become more realistic now. We have now reached the stage where people are looking for a change. There were certain standards in the past which I never liked. There were several reasons I did not approve of censorship. One was that you cannot enforce it. It just cannot be done and, therefore, it is humbug to try to enforce it.
May I speak as one the drudgery of whose routine work is relieved to some extent by almost daily contact with literature of one kind or another? I should like to join with the other Senators who welcomed the Bill and I should like to compliment the Minister on the introduction of a measure that is at the same time right-minded and considerably overdue. In doing this, I am painfully conscious of the violence that has been done to the good name of literature and literary artists in the past under this very roof. On reading through the Official Report of the discussion that took place in Dáil Éireann, as this Bill passed through its various Stages and having listened to the speeches made up to the present in this House, I cannot help noticing with some satisfaction the concern for good literature that animated most of the speeches. It is with no less satisfaction one notices the almost total lack of suggestion that literary artists are any longer suspect or are classified in the minds of legislators as rogues, pimps and vagabonds.
I mention those points because they seem to indicate we are on the point of officially recognising the true function of artists in the community and because on more than one depressing occasion in the past, when matters of this kind were being discussed, both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Oireachtas, to put it bluntly, disgraced themselves. One has only to go into the Library of the House and read certain Parliamentary Reports for the years 1929 and 1946 to appreciate the degree to which the spirit of inquisition has taken precedence over commonsense. Perhaps the most regrettable degree of obscurantism was reached in that famous, or should I say infamous, debate in the Seanad on The Tailor and Ansty in the autumn of 1943 when discussing a motion by the late Sir John Keane. It was then decreed that quotations from the book read out in the Seanad should be struck from the record lest they corrupt the youth of the nation.
Or the Seanad.
——or the Seanad. Speaking a few years ago on Radio Éireann, Mr. Benedict Kiely said that to read the report now was "to be staggered utterly with a nuthouse feeling of unreality." As a Member of this House it is no pleasure for me to have to recall things like this, and that there are passages here and there in the records of the House that could be incorporated in a work of science fiction by somebody like George Orwell.
In criticising the attitude taken by Deputies and Senators in the past, a word might be said by way of explanation if not justification. Many of the people who came to positions of power and influence in the early years of the State had a background of such a nature that they had very little interest in or contact with artistic expression of any kind. That is generally true, but, of course, there were notable exceptions. To say this about them is not necessarily an indictment of them. It is merely an expression of fact. Seán O'Faolain was probably near the mark when he described them as "ordinary decent kindly self-seeking men who had no intention of jeopardising their new found prosperity by gratuitous displays of moral courage". In other words, it was far easier for them to condemn out-of-hand the writer or the intellectual in quest of free expression than to try to understand him and to be branded as pseudo-intellectuals if they championed his cause. Even yet in certain quarters it is felt that an intellectual approach in matters of this kind is inferior to the aggressively chauvinistic and unreasoning one. This attitude in the past was particularly unfortunate in view of the fact that so many of the men who won us our freedom were themselves intellectuals. When the gun was laid aside and the pen might have been taken up to win us a greater measure of intellectual freedom—indeed, it was taken up with conspicuous courage by some writers—the crushing code of censorship prevented us from hearing many things about ourselves that might have been of benefit to us. In an effort to exclude ideas that gave us an uncomfortable feeling, especially if expressed by Irish writers, and if they came too near the bone, we set up a censorship machinery with full legislative approval that sometimes banned books, as the late Francis McManus wrote, "with a savagery that seemed pathological." Now in a rather belated attempt to catch up with public opinion, and because it is becoming more difficult, if not impossible, to exclude or to censor ideas, we are in the process of liberalising our censorship code and giving post factum legislative approval to the increasing commonsense of our censors and to the increasingly mature judgment of our people.
The Minister has said that his reason for doing this was that the law was being brought into disrepute. As Minister for Justice, he must, of course, be concerned primarily with the legal aspect of the matter, but one would like to feel also that the present Bill has come before us because in the past we have so often unjustifiably charged writers with indecency and obscenity when, in fact, they were merely attempting to mirror society as they found it and were being true to themselves and to the discipline of their craft.
Since this Bill first came before the Houses of the Oireachtas only one commentator, to my knowledge, has publicly reaffirmed the writer's commitment in all this which is to delineate the world as he finds it, not as we would like him to find it. As long as writers are true to themselves and feel a responsibility towards the society they live in they must sometimes rub our noses in the mess that we make.
It is not so much the content of the Bill that we have before us but the spirit that animated the Minister in introducing it that convinces me that we have now come to realise that there is no area of life that is unfit to be explored by the writer provided he illuminates it with the light of artistic truth and provided he surrounds it with such decent reticence as would be imposed on him by the subtlety of his art. Perhaps, too, it is safe to assume, and we have come to accept, the fact that the writer is necessarily anti-establishment or at least he cannot afford to be pro-establishment if his work is to be of any significance either as art or as social comment. He is committed to the truth as he sees it even if he treads on the toes of people who may imagine themselves to be above criticism.
While the Bill makes some recompense to the many fine and conscientious writers we have labelled indecent or obscene in the past, and at the same time ensures that we will still be spared the horrors of actual and wanton obscenity, it does nothing, perhaps because it can do nothing, to wipe out the many forms of unofficial censorship that exist in Ireland. I have in mind the type of thing that Senator McQuillan referred to here on the last day. Neither, of course, does it deprive the customs officers of what is, in effect, the power of censorship granted to them under the 1946 Act. I do not propose to enter into any criticism of the mechanics of the censorship process, except to endorse the view expressed by a number of Senators both last week and today that the confiscation of a book from an individual at the customs point who is exercising his mature judgment in the selection of reading matter is to my mind a gross violation of the individual's right. After all, bringing a single copy of any book into the country cannot involve any significant threat to the morals of the country, and I will join with the other Senators in asking the Minister to take the necessary steps to eliminate this practice.
My main concern here, however, is to make a plea for a fuller and more healthy recognition of the creative literary artist in society in our approach to the problem of censorship. I consider that this recognition is quite compatible with adequate regard for the morals of citizens.
At no time in the framing of censorship legislation does consideration seem to have been given to the claim to freedom of the literary man to express himself, to castigate society if he has fault to find with it, to expose the evils that obtrude themselves on his attention or to describe life as he finds it. If by virtue of this debate or through the medium of this Bill we can divert the attention of the censors even momentarily from the sole consideration of the protection of the adolescent to the wider recognition of the fact that the literary man has a major contribution to make to the moulding of society we shall have done useful work.
In the comparatively short span of time since censorship legislation was first introduced in 1929 there has been, as has been noted by many speakers, a tremendous change in moral attitudes, or as it has been put elsewhere, in community standards. The tendency is all towards liberalisation, towards the wider acceptance of the unconventional. If that tendency is maintained, as it is likely to be, unless a violent reaction sets in, which is not now foreseeable, we shall again be legislating at some time in the future to bring our censorship laws into conformity with the new community standards. The improved all-round standards of education are undoubtedly responsible in a large measure for the changes that are taking place. Would it be unreasonable, or would it be discounting original sin too much, to hope that we would one day reach a point where censorship would no longer be necessary, where every Irishman would have attained that degree of sophistication and maturity that he would say as the Roman writer, Terence, was able to say of himself some 2,000 years ago: "I am a man and reckon nothing human alien to me."
I regard this as an insignificant Bill which, surely, does not merit the praise given it because of a simple change.
First of all, when the Minister introduced the Bill in the Dáil he mentioned a period of 20 years for the banning of publications. Now the Dáil has changed that to 12 years and the Bill comes here with a period of 12 years as the length of time during which the banning of a publication should last. To my mind, that is very insignificant even after discussion of the Bill here or when it becomes an Act. Despite what has been said by speakers who, mainly, have spoken against censorship, I refer to the discussion, mentioned by Senator Ó Conalláin, which took place in 1942. I spoke at that time, and I want to say now that when this Bill becomes an Act, when the Act becomes law and when a period of 12 years has expired books are allowed for publication and circulation, and all that entails.
Now, how does that fit in? Has a citizen the same right which he previously had and to which I referred in the debate of 1942—it was not 1943 as Senator Ó Conalláin said—to bring a complaint to the Censorship Board having read a book which he considers unfit for himself, his children or the public to read? The Board in their wisdom say that this book shall be censored as not fit for publication. Consequent on that, the publisher, the author or four or five Members of the Oireachtas have the right to appeal against the decision to the Appeal Board. I understand that formerly we had clergymen of several Christian denominations on the Appeal Board. I do not know who is on it at present. However, you have a citizen bringing to the notice of the Censorship Board a book in circulation which he thinks is not fit for circulation. Then an Appeal Board reconsiders that if appeal has been made.
I congratulate Senator O'Quigley on the figures he gave the last day. To my mind, they were very enlightening. They show that some writers are anxious that some of their, books should be censored and not allowed to be sold here. Let them have it.
On the occasion of the debate on the motion of Sir John Keane in 1942 I pointed out that we had higher standards and I even boasted that our standards were higher than standards elsewhere. I still maintain that view. Myles na gGopaleen, God rest him, referred to my remarks in verse in the Irish Times and the fact that I claimed that our standards are higher than standards elsewhere. I claimed they were and I claim they are and I claim that we should have censorship of publications. I claim, too, that the discussion in 1942 revolved around three publications. One was The Tailor and Ansty which depicted people in Cork to which I objected as a West Cork man. I recommend the discussion to Senator Garret FitzGerald whose father spoke, as Senator Garret FitzGerald would speak, at great length.
(Interruptions.)
I cannot reply to all these interruptions. However, these three publications were mentioned. One was The Tailor and Ansty. The second was Land of Spices. I say this—when this Bill is passed, if nobody else brings it to the notice of the Censorship Board that this ban should be maintained, I shall do it, as a public representative and a Member of the Seanad.
Shame!
It is a scandalous production about a nun in a convent. It is the only one of the books that I have read in detail. Any young girl reading it will ask: "What is at the back of this? What are they talking about? What are they thinking of?" It pervades the whole book down to the two lines. It has been said that there were only two lines in the book that caused its banning. Somebody said that sodomy was mentioned in the Bible but this was sodomy from beginning to end. Then it transpires that one of the parents of this unbeginning to end, when it transpires that the parent of this unfortunate nun was a homosexual and that finished it. It is a scandalous thing. I have seen Members from the universities in this present Seanad stand up for lawbreaking—five out of six of them. There are six representatives of the universities here and five out of six of them voted for lawbreaking. Therefore, I do not mind what they say. As a citizen who was present here at the discussion in 1942——
I wonder would the Senator make himself a little more explicit there. He is making a charge which he has not substantiated.
I also wonder how one votes in this House for lawbreaking?
If certain motions on the Order Paper come up for discussion, I shall certainly explain to the Senators then. I would be ruled out of order now. I was referring to the two occasions on which five of the six Senators voted against certain things——
The Senator must be specific. It is a very serious charge.
If the Chair allows me, I shall be specific.
Will the Senator please come to the matter under discussion?
The Senator should be specific, otherwise we shall go away with a very heavy burden on our consciences which we will not be able to relieve.
The Senator has not made any charge against any individual.
Against five or six Senators.
Against five or six of the university Senators but I would be ruled out of order if I started——
The Senator has not been ruled out of of order yet.
The Senator is sheltering behind the Rules of Order in an objectionable manner.
The Chair is asking the Senator to come to the matter under discussion——
I have been put off.
——the Censorship of Publications Bill.
On a point of order, a very serious charge has been made. Either that charge should be withdrawn or substantiated. I think there is only one choice.
The statement was of a general nature.
Could I ask the Senator if he includes me as one of the five Senators who voted for lawbreaking?
I ask Senator Ó Donnabháin to come to the matter under discussion. He has been irrelevant for some time and he must now come to the matter under discussion.
I do not think this is fair to the university Members of this House. I think that Senator Ó Donnabháin must either withdraw his charge or substantiate it. Otherwise the matter is left hanging over our heads in a most unpleasant way.
The statement was of a general nature. Senator Ó Donnabháin to continue on the Bill.
I was interrupted and the interruptions came as I was referring to a discussion in 1942 in relation to three publications which formed in the main the subject matter of Senator Sir John Keane's motion in the Seanad. I mentioned the second one. I mentioned my reaction to it. The third one was a semi-medical publication—The Laws of Life. I was referring to the fact that three books mainly were mentioned in that discussion. There was a discussion which extended over days. Senators heartily spoke against it and in favour of it but the net result was that on my initiative——
Perhaps the Senator would now move the adjournment of this debate.
Before the debate concludes is it in order—I am asking for a specific ruling on this—for a Member of the House to say quite specifically that five Members of the House voted for lawbreaking. I should like a ruling on that. Is it in order?
The Chair is not aware that the Members are identifiable.
I am merely asking for a general ruling. Is it in order for a Senator to say that five Members of the House voted for lawbreaking?
There used to be a Senator over there—Senator O'Quigley—who accused half the House of lawbreaking.
On a point of order, we have asked for a ruling.
The statement was of such a general nature that I am not going to ask for a withdrawal of it.
That was not the question Senator O'Quigley asked you. He asked you for a ruling.
The Chair cannot prevent general statements being made.
Debate adjourned.