Ireland has changed, but how much? The State still bans numerous publications, after all, not least crime magazines, writes Jean O'Mahony

Much has been made of the new Ireland emerging from the ashes of the last recession and, it is implied, the repressive economic, social and cultural climate of our recent past. But the Register of Prohibited Publications is a reminder that one heady decade of cohabiting, Frappuccinos and TV3 does not a hedonistic Hibernia make.

Convening several times a year, the Censorship of Publications Board quietly filters the books and magazines entering and circulating in the State. Its five members, appointed by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, are charged with enacting legislation that prohibits the distribution of printed material that is deemed indecent or obscene or that advocates or assists the procurement of abortion or miscarriage.

An outlawed book comes off the shelves for 12 years, at which point it can be banned again. A magazine is banned for up to 12 months, as In Dublin discovered in 1999, when it was added to the list of obscene publications. (The ban was overturned.) A second ban becomes permanent.

State censorship in Ireland has its origins in the sinisterly titled Committee on Evil Literature, which was created in 1926 by Kevin O'Higgins, as minister for justice. Informed by such groups as the Irish Vigilance Association and the Marian Sodalities of Ireland, the committee warned against "vulgar and suggestive photographs designed to inflame the passions" and any perceived threat to "public morality". Information on contraception was recommended against, as such seditious material was reckoned to be conducive to "sensual indulgence for those who desire to avoid the responsibilities of the married state".

Over the next 40 years works by Zola, Proust, Faulkner, Hemingway, Orwell, Freud, H. G. Wells, Dylan Thomas and Margaret Mead - as well as many Irish writers of note, including Shaw, Beckett, Joyce, Kavanagh, John McGahern and Edna O'Brien - were kept at arm's length from citizens too busy dancing at crossroads, tilling fields and boarding ships to read them anyway.

Even now, when the Internet is a Pandora's box in so many homes, book banning continues. It seems an anachronism. The Censorship of Publications Board apparently exists because, according to its chairwoman, Doirbhile Flanagan SC, "historically, it's a system that we had, and we still have it".

Implementing the legislation involves interpreting the terms "indecent" and "obscene". Although the Act defines indecency as anything "suggestive of, or inciting to, sexual immorality or unnatural vice, or likely in any other way to corrupt or deprave", it leaves the board to interpret the meaning of "obscene". Flanagan says: "You have to call upon your own experience to some extent in terms of what is obscene; even in relation to indecency, in effect the board and its members are coming to subjective conclusions."

So Joyce's Ulysses and Valentina Cilescu's The Phallus Of Osiris faced the same ban. The Register of Prohibited Publications spans decades and genres. The board is not obliged to justify its decision to ban a book, so you are left guessing its reasoning from the title and an (uncensored) imagination.

Although this has some practical purpose - the board's members may have found different sections of a book indecent or obscene, for example - the sometimes farcical grouping of magazines and books whose dates of publication might be separated by 70 years highlights the difficulty of a process that is subject to the fickleness of time and cultural mores.

Today, for example, conviction for possessing either Beautiful Britons magazine (incorporating Lovely Ladies), which was banned in 1958, or Maximum Perversum, which was banned last year, brings a fine of €63.49 or up to six months in prison.

Similarly, with a penchant for detective stories you could find yourself convicted for possessing magazines such as Detective Tales, Detective Weekly, Detective World, Crime Detective, Daring Detective, Detective Cases, Detective Police Cases, Front Page Detective, Inside Detective, Master Detective, True Detective, Uncensored Detective and Confidential Detective Cases. (If "detective" is a euphemism peculiar to the 1950s, it's not apparent.)

The relative lack of transparency in the censorship procedure means you are left to surmise the contents of books featured on the register. Such oeuvres as Domination Fascination and The G-Spot In Words And Pictures are self-explanatory, but titles such as Slave-Girls Of Quireme, Reform School, 2077 AD (Book II), The Fall Of Barbaria (Book I) and Persuasion (Book II) by the prolific Victor Bruno give no explicit indication of their corrupting content.

Any member of the public can submit a book for the board's consideration (the Bible was submitted in 1988), but only the author or publisher of a banned publication, or five members of the Oireachtas acting in unison, have the right to appeal a prohibition order.

Flanagan says: "If you decide that the procedures in relation to censorship and the Acts are no longer relevant to modern society, then you are taking away one road that is open to a member of the public: to get a body to make an independent judgment on what they feel should not be available."

It could be that this recourse is the only function of the Censorship of Publications Board. The Internet means that although it is illegal to independently obtain a publication relating to procuring an abortion, there is no lack of information; pornography that is banned for being too hard-core clogs up computers throughout the country; and it can help you track down a copy of Ballyhoo, a US magazine banned in 1933, so you can see for yourself what all the fuss was about.

Among the books and magazines that are still banned:

Ballyhoo magazine (banned in 1933)

Abortion Internationally by the UK National Abortion Campaign (banned in 1983)

How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed by Graham Masterson (banned in 1985)

Chained Chicken, anonymous (banned in 1995)

Kung Fu Nuns, anonymous (banned in 1995)

Hard Throbs Working The Docks, anonymous (banned in 1996)

Big Ones International magazine (banned in 1997)

Meatmen: An Anthology of Gay Male Comics (Volume I), edited by Winston Layland (banned in 1997)

Butch Boys: Stories For Men Who Need It Bad, edited by Michael Ford (banned in 1998)

Mike And The Marines by Eric Boyd (banned in 1998)