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To Lemass, by contrast, one of the most compelling motives for seeing Britain and Ireland inside the European Community is the very prospect that Ireland would thereby take a step closer to reunification. Automatic dismantling of their mutual tariff barriers under Common Market rules, says Lemass, would finally necessitate a degree of cooperation between Protestant and Catholic Ireland. Instead of the present prolonged farce of nonrecognition—neither country will even permit extradition of criminals by the other—and continued stagnation of Ulster's economy, Lemass foresees "a total national effort in which old differences and animosities can be forgotten." All the Details. The government's eagerness to raise Ireland's "Green Curtain," as Lemass calls it, reflects a growing cosmopolitanism in the universities and population centers. The Irish have made executives and technicians from more than a dozen countries resoundingly welcome. They cheered mightily for Schoolgirl Harumi Suzuki, eight-year-old daughter of a Japanese plant manager at Shannon, when she carried off first and third prizes for Irish poetry and Gaelic recitation. Young Ireland's horizons are being broadened by the foreign students who have been flocking to Irish universities, where they comprise nearly 17% of total enrollment; most come from Afro-Asian countries, where the distinctive accent of ex-colonial, nonaligned Dublin has become something of a status symbol. The visiting students, in turn, have generated new interest in language and history courses among their Irish friends.
The ultraconservative Roman Catholic clergy still heavily censors the arts and entertainment. At one time or another, many of the best native authors have been banned from libraries, including works by George Moore, Liam O'Flaherty, O'Casey, Frank O'Connor, Shaw, Brendan Behan. But things are easing up a little. Cinematic sex has become so much sexier and more frequent, ex plains Justice Minister Haughey, that the censors have been told to go easy with the scissors, "or else our cinemas won't get any films at all." Another sign of the new liberality is a scheduled visit by the Bolshoi Ballet to Dublin this month, for Irish mistrust of the intri-guous Russians is so keen that they have yet to recognize the 45-year-old Soviet government.
Television, which now lights up more than 200,000 screens, is a perennial as sault on Gaelic puritanism. Ireland's own station competes with programs beamed from Britain that seem incredibly risque to Irish viewers; the BBC's uninhibited coverage of Christine Keeler's exploits has even jogged the stodgy, self-censoring Irish press into giving readers all the details. Many Irishmen, increasingly resentful of censorship, have taken to sampling censored books, films or plays by taking the 90-minute flight to London — where far more horrendous temptations abound.