The chairman of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party has supported the banning of In Dublin, and expressed "serious concern" at a Sunday newspaper report which, he said, alleged that the magazine had played a role in recruiting prostitutes.
On RTE's Questions and Answers last night, Dr Rory O'Hanlon said it was "absolutely correct" of the Censorship Board to ban the magazine for six months.
A decision on whether to allow its re-publication would depend on whether it continued "supporting the prostitute trade," he added. "If they get out of that line of business, there's no reason they couldn't come back."
On the same programme the editor of Ireland on Sunday, Mr Liam Hayes, said his newspaper had established that In Dublin was "pivotal" to the prostitution trade, both in Dublin and the provinces, and it was unfortunate that it was still available on the shelves, albeit in another form.
It would be "very good work" if the magazine had to "disappear", he added.
But Professor William Binchy, the head of the law department of Trinity College Dublin, and legal adviser to the Pro-life movement, said that while the In Dublin case might be useful in starting a debate on censorship, banning the magazine was "not the way to go."
If offences were proven, prosecution would be the correct course of action, he added.
"Censorship is about obscenity, whereas what we're dealing with here is a human weakness around the whole question of securing the services of prostitutes."
The prostitution trade carried many risks, including the possibility of child abuse and the abuse of women forced into the trade through poverty, but it was not an issue that could be solved by censorship and he was "surprised" at the recent turn of events.
The Irish representative of the National Union of Journalists, Mr Eoin Ronayne, said the Ireland on Sunday article had raised very serious issues, but agreed with Professor Binchy that if something illegal had occurred, criminal law should be invoked.
"Censorship is a very old-fashioned way of stopping people saying things that other people don't agree with, and our worry in the NUJ is that today it happens to be something which many people will agree with in terms of prostitution, but tomorrow it could be something else."
