It’s a bit like saying Comedy Central cutting the Muslim prophet Muhammad from that south park episode means he was banned from US TV. It’s not the same thing.
It’s a fair point but not quite the same. At the time in Ireland the vast majority of the population only had access to RTÉ (and BBC if you had a big aerial on your roof and lived close enough to the north) so both state broadcasters not choosing to broadcast was an effectively a ban.
Satellite and cable were taking root but cable wasn’t an option where I lived at the time which was only 20KM from the centre of Dublin city. Outside the major cities it just wasn’t happening.
We did get a satellite dish around that time so that we weren’t restricted to just two channels (edit: our house was located in a lowland that ruled out BBC even with the usual roof aerial) but with Sky in on the ban that would have ruled that out as a way to see it too.