[2] One problem was that the vast majority of the publishers of offensive material operated outside Ireland, leaving only individual booksellers and distributors liable to prosecution.
[3] The Committee concluded that it was the Irish state's duty to prevent the circulation of publications that were considered to be obscene and morally corrupting.
The Committee proposed the introduction of new legislation and the establishment of a censorship board to advise the minister on which publications should be prohibited.
When considering a book, the Board measures its literary, scientific and historical merit and takes note of its general tenor, the language in which it is written, and its likely circulation and readership.
[1] The laws enacted by the Censorship of Publications Act, 1929 were introduced in an era of political isolationism and cultural and economic protectionism.
[7] Irish writers who were found offensive were officially regarded as agents of decadence and social disintegration who were striking at the roots of family life and moral decency.
Gannon thought that the Act was "but a simple measure of moral hygiene, forced upon the Irish public by a veritable spate of filth never surpassed".
President Éamon de Valera felt that the arts in Ireland were to be encouraged when they observed the "holiest traditions", but should be censored when they failed to live up to this ideal.
These were thought dangerous, likely to corrupt faith and morals...One encountered frequently among ordinary people bitter hostility to writers...Obscurantism had settled on the country like a fog, so of course anyone who had eyes to see and the heart to feel, was rebellious.
'[6] The Academy of Letters established by William Butler Yeats attempted to fight censorship with solidarity among writers, but it achieved little in this field.
The book was a collection of stories and sayings from an old country tailor called Timothy Buckley and his wife Anastasia that the author had recorded.
[9] Although they were exactly the type of Irish people romanticised by de Valera, their real-life language was too broad and racy for the Censorship Board.
[6] The first application made to the Appeals Board involved Brian Merriman's Irish language book The Midnight Court, which had been translated into English by Frank O'Connor.
[10] Many important works of literature continued to be banned by the Board, including East of Eden by John Steinbeck, The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene and The African Queen by C. S.
[6] Other authors banned included Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Graves, Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Thomas Mann, John Cowper Powys, Somerset Maugham and Evelyn Waugh.
The Council took a strong anti-censorship stance and awarded innovative young artists, musicians and writers as winners of the Macaulay Prize, a fellowship, including Noel Sheridan, Seóirse Bodley, Brian Friel and John McGahern.
However, the Censorship Board banned his second novel The Dark because of its themes of parental and clerical child abuse in June 1965 and he was not allowed to resume his job.
The 'McGahern case' became a cause célèbre and was a significant factor in encouraging the Fianna Fáil government to again amend the censorship law.
[14] The Censorship of Publications Act, 1967 remains in force even though the Irish social climate has greatly changed in the interim.
[3] A thoroughly researched critical study by Michael Adams, Censorship: The Irish Experience, was published in 1968 by the University of Alabama Press.