“I think our society would benefit from a rational and informed discussion about all the issues and viewpoints relating to pornography. For example, what implications are there in content that would currently be prohibited here being readily available on the web?” he said.
Kelleher said that most of the material he is currently required to ban could be released without causing much offense.
“The term pornography is not used in the film and censorship legislation,” Kelleher said. “The 1989 Video Recordings Act empowers the film censor to prohibit a video if, in his opinion, it contains ‘obscene or indecent matter’ which would tend to ‘deprave or corrupt’ persons viewing it. Note the act refers to ‘persons,’ not young children, so that includes all persons, i.e. adults. It’s quite hard to envisage how any of the so-called soft-porn DVDs could possibly be deemed to ‘deprave or corrupt’ an adult.”
Unlike many European countries, Ireland does not license sex retailers. Videos sold in self-proclaimed adult stores in Ireland are usually technically illegal because under the Video Recordings Act, a video cannot be sold until it is rated by the Irish Film Censor’s Office. Shop owners often bypass the censor’s office, leading to occasional police raids where films are seized en masse and sent to the censor’s office to confirm they have not been rated. In 2006, the censor’s office was involved in 55 court cases where films were being sold without being certified.
Kelleher thinks the laws should be updated.
“Bizarrely, it is actually not an offense for a video store to supply a DVD to a person who is younger than the rating age designated on the label,” he said.
Many shop owners oppose regulation of adult videos. They say that fees for classifying films will not be recouped on the profits from sales.
Kelleher said people should be focusing on the violence and extremities in the industry rather than simply dwelling on sexual content. This included films trading on brutality without necessarily involving sex.
“What one person deems pornographic, another may find innocuous. It is a term commentators find notoriously difficult to define. In my view, images that are sexually explicit need not necessarily be pornographic,” Kelleher said.
