The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, hopes to publish a consultation document on changing the censorship laws before the end of the year.
A spokesman for the Minister said yesterday the 53-year-old legislation was being reviewed in the light of the significant social and cultural changes in the State in intervening years.
While there would be "no rolling back in the State's attitude to hardcore pornography", the views of civil liberties groups would be taken on board.
The spokesman said the review was "entirely unrelated" to the controversy surrounding the ban imposed on In Dublin by the Censorship of Publications Board. He said it was the result of a commitment the Minister made in the Department's strategy statement and had begun four months ago.
An examination of censorship laws was "timely . . . given that they're now in place for the last 50 years", he said. The "whole cultural outlook and social situation" had changed "out of all recognition" since the drafting of the 1929 and 1946 Acts.
"The whole apparatus of censorship" would be reviewed, including that of films, videos and CD-ROMs. The question of censoring the Internet didn't arise: "it's more a question of how to deal with the issues that the Inter net raises". The priority of the review would be the protection of children, the spokesman said.
The Department of Justice will consult with the Departments of Education and Health and a wide range of organisations including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Rape Crisis Centre and organisations which assist victims of violence. The Fine Gael Spokesman on Justice, Mr Jim Higgins TD, welcomed the review but said he was "somewhat cynical" about the timing of its announcement.
Mr Higgins said that by necessity, discussions on the In Dublin ban had been conducted "without full access to the facts". He said the Censorship of Publications Board, if there was no legal prohibition on them doing so, should "spell out the precise advertisements that were deemed objectionable and the manner in which they were held to be obscene".
Meanwhile, Internet Service Providers of Ireland said it would set up a hotline in the next two months to allow Internet users to report Irish-based material they had found on the World Wide Web which they believed to be illegal. The hotline will co-operate with similar initiatives elsewhere in Europe in an effort to halt the spread of child pornography.
