The Committee on Evil Literature was a committee set up by the Irish Free State's Department of Justice in 1926 to look into censorship of printed matter. After independence in 1922 the authorities of the Irish Free State come under increasing pressure to ban materials considered obscene or liable to corrupt public morals. In October 1925 the Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, told the Dáil Éireann that existing obscenity laws were sufficient and the government had no right to further interfere with people's personal freedom. He came in for heavy criticism for these remarks and mounting public pressure persuaded him, on February 12, 1926, to appoint a departmental committee, the Committee on Evil Literature, to consider and report "whether it is necessary or advisable in the interest o