Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We heard yesterday about the proposed scrapping of outdated censorship laws. There can be no argument that where laws fall into destitution, they should be disposed of. However, I hope people realise that there are still ways in which literature, and not only literature, can harm people whether it is called evil literature or not. I only have to think of the concern among many parents about the highly inappropriate material available to children as young as 12 in some of our libraries. I do not think the Government has acted to resolve that yet.

I am also concerned about what seems to me to be a push to manage what people see and hear, to curate and condition the public mood by controlling what people see and hear. We are presented with a narrative that there are good actors. RTÉ and others talk about trust and public service broadcasting and so on, and suggest there are bad actors in the unregulated Wild West. There is some truth in that and the national counter disinformation strategy is looking at misinformation, disinformation and malinformation, whereby truthful information is used with an intention to deceive. What about when we are deceived by omission or when the so-called good actors cover up information? There was a very interesting piece by John McGuirk of Gript in recent days about what I thought was a shameful censoring of the victim impact statement of Ryan Casey, the loved one of a young woman whose murder transfixed this nation. Mr. Casey asked how someone can come to this country and get social housing and social welfare, not hold down a job of any description and not contribute to society for ten years. That statement was effectively censored across the mainstream media. Where it was put up initially, it was taken down.

There is an answer to that grieving question but the answer can never be to silence what people say. As John McGuirk stated in his article, there is a notion that without public funding, the country would be covered in a Vesuvian ash cloud of misinformation. That is the kind of omission and censoring of public utterance that is not healthy in a democracy. We need to have a discussion in this House about where we are going with respect to the flow of information in our society, who the good actors and bad actors are, and how we can have a careful and respectful debate on the issue. There are issues of major concern when publicly funded and other mainstream broadcasters, journalists, outlets and providers act in such a way.