Sir, - If the decision by the Censorship of Publications Board to ban In Dublin magazine results in a fundamental reappraisal of the need for a government-appointed watchdog on public morality, then it will have served some purpose.
It may have escaped the attention of these guardians of our morals that the information age has rendered them impotent, and there is nothing they can do about it. It is laughable that they should ban a publication without providing an explicit rationale for their decision. It is even more laughable that they should imagine that this will in any way protect the interests of a public which has access to all manner of uncensored material on the Internet.
We have a Freedom of Information Act, but it seems that this does not mean that government agencies will embrace freedom of information. Rather, they will force the public to jump through whatever hoops are prescribed in order to get the information to which they are entitled. In a true atmosphere of openness, this decision, and the thinking behind it, would be published on the Internet. Why is the Censorship of Publications Board unwilling to put forward its case? Could it be that it would expose the futility of its own existence by so doing?
This outrageous decision will be circumvented by the use of a legal technicality which will allow the magazine to appear under another name. The fact that this can happen undermines the credibility of our legal system and demonstrates the futility of the situation.
It is time that we dispensed with this unnecessary body, and allowed the criminal law to determine what is legally acceptable. Within the boundaries of what is legal, let us trust our citizens to decide for themselves which publications they wish to read. We already have this right in relation to publications on the Internet, which cannot be regulated within any one country. Why should citizens with Internet access be accorded a different degree of freedom from those who have access only to the print media? - Yours, etc.,
Tim Delaney, Gordon Street, Ringsend, Dublin 4.