Dan Boyle (Green Party)

A comment was made on the usefulness of this debate. It is worth noting this Chamber has a history of debating issues of public offence and censorship. The most famous debate in this Chamber was on the publication of The Tailor and Ansty in 1942, which had some of best contributions ever made in a Seanad debate and is a depressing account of Ireland as it was then as most of the contributions reflected an Ireland that was yet to mature.

The Tailor and Ansty, although written by an Englishman who was more Irish than the Irish themselves, is now an established part of our literary canon. One would wonder how so much heat was caused by such an innocent publication. The most risqué thing in the book was an account of Ansty refusing to have a bed that was bought in the local barracks because it contained a gunnery, which is a risky double entendre but is amusing in its own right.

I like to think we have moved well beyond that, but we have moved very slowly. The censorship Acts, which were reformed in the 1960s, had been used over the first 45 years of this country's existence to ban hundreds upon hundreds of books and films. There was a furore in the 1970s about "The Spike", which was not a very good television programme but it excited the nation at the time because there was a naked woman on Irish screens for the first time.

Whenever my grandmother heard the holy name being mentioned she blessed herself, which is the want of many people who are religiously inclined. It is a natural reflex. If she was watching programmes today, like those with Mr. Gordon Ramsey, she would probably suffer from repetitive strain injury. It is the nature of the world we now live in.

We must note there have been positive developments. The film censor has altered the name of his office to the Irish Film Classification Office, and this means we are not deciding what people should or should not see but advising them on the content. It is necessary to have such controls in television. We have the 9 o'clock watershed and sometimes have a rating system as to whether something is general viewing or otherwise. We live in a multimedia world where if there is potential for offence to be caused, people are warned in advance and have the option of not watching or switching off.

I would not like to see the State broadcaster forced to carry certain types of broadcasts and not others. There is a significant part of the Irish population that have a traditional outlook on life which they feel is not reflected in the programming of the State broadcaster. That is a more relevant debate. The issue it is not whether something is or is not broadcast, rather whether the balance achieved by our State broadcaster is reflective of Irish society as a whole. That is a more real debate we should have. I hope today's discussion would indicate the beginning of such a debate. We have such an opportunity with the passage of the Broadcasting Bill 2008 that has already gone through this House, is being discussed in the other House and may return here for final amendments. It will shape broadcasting policy for a number of years.

We need to recognise that television, in particular, has become what radio used to be for those of my generation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is not a matter of watching the one channel that started at 5.30 p.m. and finished at 11 p.m.. Hundreds of channels are available to most consumers and they broadcast to most houses across the country. The options available are: fair warning of what the content of a programme should be, the ability of people to watch or not to watch television, and the ability of people to watch other television stations. If those safeguards are in place, the risk of public offence is greatly lessened.

That said, if we believe in a liberal society where the content for adults should be what they are willing to see and talk about, the real safeguards and controls are needed for children who are not of adult age and need to be protected in certain ways until they are able to make such decisions themselves. This is another element of the debate that should be progressed. There is no argument for basing broadcasting standards on the prejudice of anyone who is a mature adult.

They only thing that should exist in a liberal society is the protection we have for those unable to make adult decisions. If that is the level of our debate, we will reflect the society in which we live. If not, we need to take into account certain considerations to put Ireland and Irish broadcasting in a 21st century context.