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On 9 March 2000, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform announced the establishment of the Internet Advisory Board. The new Board will monitor and oversee the self-regulatory system that was recommended by the Working Group on the Illegal and Harmful Use of the Internet in July 1998. The main functions of the Board will include helping the Irish Service Provider industry to introduce codes of practice and common acceptable usage conditions, and assisting in the setting up of a hotline for reporting and investigating complaints about illegal material on the Internet (see IRIS 2000-2:...

In December 1999 a Dublin court handed down a two-and-a-half year prison sentence for criminal libel. The charges arose out of messages sent by a man to Internet bulletin boards and by e-mail, alleging that one of his former teachers was a paedophile. The allegations were investigated by the police and a file submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions before they were found to be false. The accused man had continued to send such messages while on bail pending trial for criminal libel. He later admitted that he had published the allegations maliciously, knowing them to be false. In Ireland,...

At the end of November 1999, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) launched a hotline service aimed at rooting out child pornography on the Internet in Ireland, either by removing it or by referring it to the gardai (police). The hotline will be available to receive complaints from the public about any child pornography found on the Net in Ireland. The intention is not to block web sites but rather to remove harmful material and, where the material is hosted outside the country, to pass the information on to the relevant organisation and co-ordinate removal of the material, if appropriate....

Ireland's film censorship, notorious for the banning or cutting of thousands of films until the early 1970s, has been much less rigorous and therefore less contentious in recent years. The banning of films like "Natural Born Killers" in 1994 and "Showgirls" in 1995 became the exception. At the end of 1999, release on video of the Danish film, "The Idiots" was banned on the grounds that it included obscene or indecent matter that would tend to deprave or corrupt persons who might view it (Video Recordings Act 1989, s.3). However, in 1999 also, the film, "A Clockwork Orange", was passed for cinema...

The Irish Supreme Court has upheld a decision of the High Court (see IRIS 1998-6: 7) in a case concerning radio and television broadcasts in relation to constitutional referendums. Under the Irish Constitution, there must be a referendum before any amendment to the Constitution can be made. In 1995 a referendum to remove the constitutional ban on divorce gave rise to much litigation regarding the conduct of referendum campaigns. Just before the referendum, the Supreme Court held that the government had acted unconstitutionally - inter alia by offending the constitutional guarantee of equality...