Music brightens. Scenes of wind farms, wave machines, fields of rapeseed, hybrid cars, bustling factories, happy kids with puppies.

And a pipeline pumping clean Corrib Gas onshore in Mayo. "Shell is working hard to make Ireland'' energy future a little more secure.

Shell . . . part of the solution."

Somehow I don't think RTE would run it. Ditto my other suggested ads:

Ibec getting out its message on productivity in the social partnership talks; FAS, putting out its side on the decentralisation work stoppage;

'magic' mushroom importers arguing against the Liveline-conjured mob's insistence on a ban; clerical sex abuse survivors urging people to boycott Mass until the Catholic Church cleans up its act.

RTE would have little choice but to refuse them, because a 45-year old piece of legislation prevents the state broadcaster from airing "any advertisement which is directed towards any religious or political end, or has any relation to an industrial dispute".

Fortunately, those of us who find that bit of the 1960 Broadcasting Act to be an obnoxious and creeping blight on the Irish media landscape, hostile to any recognisable concept of free expression, have a new, if unlikely, ally this week: Fergus Finlay.

The Labour spin doctor turned Barnardos chief exec (though some have a hard time discerning a notable difference in his public role) . . . having found that the existing law would prevent him from running even more emotionally manipulative ads suggesting that a 2006 Irish childhood is hell on earth and demanding wholesale changes in the legal code and the structure of the economy to fix this supposed crisis . . .

has issued a dire warning.

He told a soon-to-be regulated voluntary sector audience that increasingly restrictive interpretations of that 45-year-old law, forced on RTE by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC), "may be terminally damaging to the quality of public discourse in Ireland, to normal democratic ways of seeking change."

Barnardos, like many charitable organisations, has a political agenda.

It wants certain laws to be changed and to ensure that others remain as they are. And so Finlay now warns darkly about some sort of conspiracy, "by stealth", or a series of accidents, that may lead to the "stifling" . . . The Irish Times reported that he used the word "gagging", though it does not appear in the prepared remarks posted to Barnardos' website . . . of the voluntary sector.

If they can't get their advocacy messages across, what good can they do?

Good question. Possibly the same question that the ecumenical Christian activists behind the 'Power to Change' campaign asked themselves when they tried to place their ads on RTE in 2002 and were initially refused. Finlay, alone on a Questions & Answers panel, wanted the pro-God ads banned.

But it's all right. Whatever has caused Finlay's Damascene conversion to the cause of free expression and stand against regulation inappropriate for a modern, open society, his support must be welcomed.

In his speech, he even identified the landmark BCC ruling upholding a complaint by RGDATA against an ad from the interim National Consumer Agency promoting consultation about the Groceries Order as the source of the problem. Since then other ads, including for NGOs holding meetings about Rossport, have been refused.

But it was a dispute about whether the rules of commerce should be open to robust debate that kicked it off.

RTE's public affairs chief Peter Feeney doesn't think the regulations should have to be so restrictive. But he has bigger fish to fry with the BCC, taking them on in an expensive High Court challenge over a graphic with rosary beads and Roman collar that was used as part of coverage of the Ferns Report. One viewer complained that it was offensive to Catholics and the BCC upheld the complaint. With no appeals process other than bringing in a 10,000-a-day legal team, they have to pick their battles.

Feeney suggests that perhaps the Ombudsman might be able to fulfil an appeals role, which might make appeals more frequent and pull us all back towards sanity.

Far more preferable would be the radical solution: repeal the 1960 Broadcast Act and deregulate the marketplace of ideas. Personally, I think the Institute of Advertising Practitioners of Ireland (Iapi) has it right when it argues that government should, in general, get out of the business of censoring speech.

"Where you have self-regulated institutions, they can adapt to changing societal mores, " says Iapi's John Holohan. A 1980s Budget Travel ad depicting a bikini-clad woman was thought to be a violation of taste and standards, and had to be modified. It would be "ludicrous" if someone argued for that kind of censorship today, Holohan adds.

The main reason usually cited in favour of the ban, that it prevents a US-style arms race of political ads, is a red herring. Campaign spending limits can prevent one party from flooding the airwaves.

The logic of the ban, like most hamfisted regulation, leads inevitably to distortions of the marketplace (in this case, of ideas) that even an aul' lefty like Fergus Finlay has been forced to notice. Doubtless he'll disagree on what should be done about it, but acknowledging the problem is a start.