245 / 294
have to pay any tax on selling it subsequently, even if
he has carried out improvements thereto. A person who
has a freehold interest is regarded as making a delivery
if he transfers the whole of his interest or grants a lease
for more than ten years. The amount on which tax is
chargeable is confined to 60 per cent of the total consid-
eration.
The final lecture was given by Mr. E. A. Cummins,
Manager of the Trustee Department of the Bank of
Ireland, on the subject of "Administration of Estates".
This very abstruse subject was dealt with under the
following headings : The Succession Act, Domicile of
Choice, Quoted Share Valuations, Policies of Life In-
surance, Superannuation Funds, Joint Property, Trusts
and Settlements, Discretionary Settlements, Shares in
Private Companies, Interest on Estate Duty, Certificates
of Discharge from Death Duties, Liquidity, Pre Death-
Duty Planning, Land and Farm Values, and other mat-
ters. This lecture contains eighteen pages of close fools-
cap typing and Mr. Cummins gives very many useful
hints in administering an estate.
It was certainly surprising that some of the most
abstruse problems of any law should have attracted
such a wide audience, but presumably the social events
played a large part in bringing the members together.
NOTICE
It is hoped that the Special Seminar of the Young
Solicitors Society, organised by the Faculty of Law of
the University of Exeter in South West England, on
European Community Law, on 30th September and 1st
October 1972, in Dublin, will be fully reported in the
December issue. It is also hoped that the Autumn
Seminar, on Family Law, to be held in Waterford on
4th and 5th of November will be reported in that issue.
Use jails to eradicate pornography
- Lord Longford
New laws to make it easier to jail pornographers are
demanded today in the 520-page report of Lord Long-
ford's unofficial commission on pornography. It de-
mands prison sentences of up to three years for "blue"
film makers and organisers of live sex shows. And it
wants the new laws to cover radio and television,
theatres and cinemas—and sex education in schools.
The young are particularly vulnerable and therefore
need special protection, the report says.
It cites instances of links between pornographv and
criminal corruption, one of them involving a boy of
seventeen. "The painful irony of the present situation is
that the young—those who claim to be the most dis-
turbed bv the public violence they read about in the
press- -a: e precisely those who are, above all, being
conditioned tc accept, and to participate in, private
violence such as we have described—the sadistic and
brutal hardcore of pornography."
The commission was set up sixteen months ago by
the 66-year-old Lord Longford. Among the sweeping
legal changes it demands are :
A two-fold law under which it would be illegal to :
Display in a street or other public place any written,
pictorial or other material which was held to be inde-
cent; produce or sell any article which outraged con-
temporary standards of decency or humanity accepted
by the public at large.
Prosecutions and penalties
Penalties for inducing people to act in obscene shows
or take part in pornographic films should be a fine or
imprisonment for not more than three years, or both.
Distributing or exhibiting publicly .'any written, pic-
torial or other material which is indecent," should lead
to fine or imprisonment for no longer than six months,
or both. The present film censors should be replaced
by a collective board of councillors, film-makers and
professions most concerned with young people.
Prosecution would be easier if the report's definitions
of obscenity and pornography became law and "should
therefore be much more readily undertaken". Porno-
graphy it defines as that which "exploits and dehum-
anises sex, so that human beings are greeted as things
and women in particular as sex objects".
The test of obscenity should be : "An article or a per-
formance of a play is obscene if its effect, taken as a
whole, is to outrage contemporary standards of decency
or humanity accepted by the public at large."
"The proposed reform of the law relating to obscene
publications would apply to sex education in schools.
It would then be illegal to show children under educa-
tional auspices any material which may not be shown
in a public place. We recommend the recognition that
sex education is primarily an affair for parents. No local
authority or school should have the right to arrange
programmes of sex education without full consultation
with the parents concerned."
The report says the number of pornographic book
shops has doubled in the last three years and that the
"blue" films trade has recently created its first million-
aire.
In a breakdown of the pornography trade, the report
says that the mail-order business will continue to increase
unlss it is stopped.
In a chapter devoted to violence and pornography
the report says there is clearly a link between the two.
The two most common effects of pornography, it says,
are "an ever-growing appetite for pornography until it
becomes a positive addiction leading to all sorts of
deviant obsessions and actions" and "a deadening pro-
cess, a diminished sensitivity, a ceasing to be shocked."
Irish Times
(20 September 1972)
- 2 4 9