Last Monday Dublin City Council adopted a new "protocol", which will make it more difficult to advertise political or social gatherings.

The protocol also bans completely such advertising in Grafton Street, Henry Street and O'Connell Street.

As you stroll from window to window, you will not now be accosted by a poster asking what you think of a war in Iraq that is killing thousands of human beings.

You will not have to dwell fleetingly on an advertisement for a meeting to discuss corruption in the seat of power. You can walk on by where once there was a poster urging you to come and learn about how child poverty exists a few hundred yards from where you are standing. From now on, you will be able to shop in peace.

What would the Liberator have made of it? The street they fashioned in his name cannot now be used to bring forth people who might have new ideas to offer on the organisation of society? Let them shop instead.

While the council, on behalf of the people, apparently wants to save shoppers from some of the horrors of the real world, other outrages will persist.

Advertising for general elections is to continue to pollute these streets. This bears twisted logic as, for the greater part, those participating in general elections just want you to get on with your shopping and not think too deeply about anything else.

Most of the organisations, groupings or just ad hoc gatherings that will be affected by the banning and new restrictions are on the fringes of public life. The main political parties don't advertise in that way, principally because, god forbid, they might attract to one of their meetings people who turn out to be undesirable. Or youngsters with new ideas who don't really know their place.

And it is the young who disproportionately are attracted to the kind of gatherings that the city council is banning. The internet is now a far greater networking and advertising tool than paper and cardboard but casual interest is still routinely first sparked on the street.

The groups and gatherings that used to heretofore advertise on the street tend to be heavy on idealism, the fuel that ignites passion for engaging with society or the wider world. Very often, when the flushes of youth recede, those who have engaged drift from idealism to pragmatism.

Some even end up shopping. But at least they are engaged, and their interest was first awoken by that poster calling all the young dudes to mobilise their idealism.

The attempts to restrict young people engaging with social and political movements or groups is surprising, considering the beliefs of the country's leader, that rabid socialist, Bertie Ahern.

Last year he set up a task force on active citizenship, designed to get people to engage more with society.

Recently, when launching the report, he stated that it "identifies profound concerns about democratic participation and local participation structures".

Bertie wants people to engage.

Well, sort of. Dublin City Council is restricting the potential to engage but that doesn't bother our Bertie. The engagement he has in mind is primarily to do with volunteering in the charity sector, filling gaps left by a government which prefers shopping to services.

This volunteering could, for example, consist of going out and raising money for vital equipment for a children's hospital, something that has to be done on a regular basis. But under no circumstances should you be engaging with anything which questions why a wealthy state doesn't provide such basic services to its children. That kind of debate will no longer be facilitated through advertising on the streets.

Active citizenship, it would appear, is whatever the powers that be define it as. If you have young, fresh ideas about how society should be organised, stay at home or disengaged. If you are willing to engage within the parameters set out by those who govern, then come on down and join the party.

Failing that, you can always go shopping.