Updated 5.10pm

THE IONA INSTITUTE YouTube account has been restored this afternoon following its unexplained removal from the video sharing website earlier today.

The account was taken down earlier today with a notice saying: “This account has been terminated due to repeated or severe violations of our Terms of Service.”

However it was restored this afternoon and a spokeswoman for Google told TheJournal.ie that it had “nothing to do with censorship” as had been earlier speculated on by the director of the conservative think tank, David Quinn.

The spokeswoman said the account’s temporary removal was a “verification issue”. Quinn said on Twitter this evening: “Seemingly we hadn’t responded to an email from them verifying our account.”

Earlier Quinn said there had been “no explanation whatsoever” for the removal of the account.

He added that he could only speculate as to the reasons for the removal but said “at the moment it looks like censorship, we are one organisation among many that would have a similar point of view”.

A Google spokeswoman said at the time that videos are generally taken down if in breach of community guidelines but acknowledged that it was unusual for an entire account to be taken down as the Iona Institute’s had been and said the matter was being looked into.

Normally videos which are found to be in violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service are removed and Quinn suggested that a recent video posted to the account ‘The Case for Man & Woman Marriage’ was the reason for the account removal but queried the validity of this.

YouTube: theionainstitute

He told TheJournal.ie earlier today: “I mean when you consider a lot of the content on YouTube really is questionable in terms of taste and so on it’s just baffling as to why this would happen.

“I hope we haven’t come to a case where a traditional view of marriage is increasingly being censored. If that is the case and Google is doing this then they should be doing that to all organisations with similar views,” he added.