Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

While I appreciate that parents are concerned about class sizes, and rightly so, in recent weeks they have also been concerned about the film censor and the somewhat bizarre decisions he has taken. In that context, would the Leader consider it worthwhile to invite the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to the House? He is the political boss of Mr. Kelleher, who in recent weeks has passed uncut a movie which will now be shown in theatres showing actual sex on screen. Also, in the past few days he has justified giving a 15 PG rating to a Santa Claus movie which RTE rightly highlighted on its main news last night, expressing the concerns of many parents who will be confused coming up to Christmas about the title of a film the content of which is very adult. In both instances, the film censor has justified these decisions rather bizarrely by suggesting that adults should be able to make up their own minds. I have no problem with that, but anybody who goes to cinemas will know that in many cases the people issuing and collecting the tickets are only in their late teens. There are very few instances of enforcement across the country of the existing film censorship laws. I applaud UCI in Dublin which has issued public statements to make parents aware of the mature and adult content of the Santa Claus movie.

This is not about what appears in the movies but what happens when these films go to video. These films will go directly to video and I know from my experience as a parent of young children that these videos are readily available throughout the country. The law is not being enforced and I ask the Leader to seriously consider inviting the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to the House to discuss the whole question of censorship, not only as it applies to the cinema and theatrical releases but also to video releases for which no classifications are given.