David Norris (Independent)

I do apologise, a Chathaoirligh. Thank you so much for your kind remarks. Please shower me with them as much as you can. I am giving clear and historically referenced reasons for my position on this.

The only complaint from the audience about Shaw's play, when shown in the Abbey Theatre, was that it was not half hot enough. No one was actually offended.

There was an interesting piece in the Irish Examiner a while ago whose headline was "Sinister blasphemy law would play into the hands of religious nut cases". It continued:

If Jesus were in Ireland today, under the new law, wouldn't he be one of its first victims, held in Portlaoise, perhaps, while lawyers debated whether he should be deported to Israel, or the Palestinian Authority, or tried here? Muslims might find their mosques under close inspection, too.

The question raised, which the Minister has not answered, was that of a concrete example of the kind of blasphemy intended to be cured by this law. My colleague, Senator Mullen, provided a couple of examples, which I challenged. The Minister was not present at the time and he might like to be aware of this. I will paraphrase one example and I am sure Senator Mullen will correct me if I am incorrect. He thought there should be a law dealing with somebody who outrageously stood outside a mosque and said something along the lines of the Holocaust being a good thing. That is roughly what was said. The other example he gave was obnoxious treatment of the Host at the Eucharist.