Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. McCarthy to the committee. Clearly, he is well known in Cork as a man in very good standing and experience, particularly in the regulatory area. He is the ideal candidate for the job and I am delighted to see him before us. It struck me today that the last time censorship was debated in these Houses was possibly in the 1920s in the Seanad, when the protagonists at the time were W.B. Yeats and a Professor McGuinness, one on the left and one on the right. Then we had terrible censorship at the time of Kate O'Brien and Seán Ó Faoláin, even right up to McGahern's time. To his credit, the one politician in the country who did a lot to undo that damage was the late Brian Lenihan senior. As Minister for Justice, he lifted the ban on a pile of books. All those books were banned mainly on the grounds of sexual content, which is extraordinary in Ireland. Books in other countries were banned because they may have been politically subversive, or they may have challenged preconceived notions in areas of life other than sex. The main concern of Mr. McCarthy's job will be with the availability and the different ways in which people can access that kind of stuff. My own feeling is that the less censorship, the better. Is it right for anybody to tell an intelligent adult that they cannot read this or that, other than child pornography or something that would lead to the abuse of children? Other than that, I would be very liberal in that respect.

I hope that Mr. McCarthy's tenure is a success. I have no questions, just observations, and I wish him every success in his position.