Give Me A Crash Course in . . . Hate speech

• Author: Conor Gallagher
• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020

Part one will make it a criminal offence to engage in hate speech against an individual or group based on a defined list of categories, eg sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background.

Part two will deal with hate crimes. These will be defined as offences which are already illegal, such as assaults, threats and criminal damage but which are also purposely targeted against a person because of their background. Such crimes will carry tougher sentences than their ordinary equivalents. For example, breaking the windows of a Mosque out of hatred of Muslims will carry a tougher sentence than doing the same to a shop.

I thought we already had a law against hate speech We do. It is called the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 which for its time was relatively forward-thinking legislation (although it initially did not include Travellers as a protected group).

However, it is clear from Dáil debates at the time that it was never intended to be used extensively. Ireland was seen by officialdom as a monocultural society, meaning there was no perceived need for hate speech laws. The Government only introduced the Act to comply with EU rules.

Now the Department of Justice has determined that the Act is not fit for purpose in a modern Ireland. This is supported by the data. There have been just five convictions under the Act since its introduction 31 years ago.

For this reason, it is to be repealed entirely and replaced with more robust legislation. Unlike the 1989 Act, this legislation will include trans people and people with disability.

So it will become a crime to insult someone now? Minister for Justice Helen McEntee ( below) has been keen to stress that the law will not cover insulting remarks, even if those remarks gravely offend someone from a minority community.

Rather, the law will criminalise incitement to hatred against groups or individuals. The intent is to set a high bar for prosecution and avoid cases of prosecutorial overreach seen in other countries.

"We're not trying to catch people out, this is not something you can stumble into by accident. This is not about somebody causing offence to somebody else or mis-speaking," the Minister said on Thursday.

Who gets to decide what is or isn't hate speech? Under UK laws, something is considered hate speech if the victim believes it to be hateful. Ireland is likely to go a...