> But the police had investigated Fry under the law, which, far from being a relic, was enacted in 2009. Equating Ireland and Indonesia is quite the stretch. T

> But the police had investigated Fry under the law, which, far from being a relic, was enacted in 2009. Equating Ireland and Indonesia is quite the stretch. The 'law' was enacted in 2009 but here's the full story (yoinked from elsewhere): Blasphemy is mentioned as an offence in the constitution, and the Defamation Act 1961 declared that the publication of blasphemous material was punishable by up to 2 years in prison. Nobody was ever charged under that law until 1999 when some prick tried to bring about a private prosecution for blasphemy against a cartoonist. But blasphemy means different things to different people, and the Supreme Court ruled that the wording of the law was too vague and it was struck down. So, much like the issue of abortion following the X case, our laws were out of step with our constitution. Ideally, we would have removed blasphemy from the constitution at that point, but holding a referendum to remove a crime that nobody had ever been convicted for was deemed to be too wasteful. When the Defamation Act was being updated in 2009, the Minister for Justice (Dermot Ahern) had the tricky decision of what to do with the section about blasphemy. He chose to define the crime of blasphemy in such a narrow way that it would be almost impossible for someone to be convicted for for it. It's a pointless law that doesn't have any real power and which exists as a technicality to satisfy a requirement in the constitution.