Ireland’s hate crime law ‘high point of wokeism’

A former Tánaiste has criticised the Irish Government’s controversial hate crime law for promoting ‘woke’ ideology.

Senator Michael McDowell SC, who also served as Attorney General between 1999 and 2002, told the Irish Daily Mail that the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024 had brought the “notion of gender” into law “through the back door”.

Although Justice Minister Helen McEntee removed incitement to hatred from her original proposals, the new legislation, which came into force on New Year’s Eve, still allows tougher sentences in instances where crimes are deemed to be motivated by hostility towards a protected group.

‘Unenumerated’

Under the Act, gender is defined as “the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female”.

Snr McDowell described the wording to the newspaper as “the high point of wokeism”. He added: “It’s bad law bringing in a concept that no one knows what it means.”

The practising barrister argued that it should not be left to judges to decide which of the “unenumerated genders” suggested by the law a potential victim of hate crime might be.

In October, highlighting the expansive nature of the wording, Senator Sharon Keogan took almost 25 minutes to read a list of nearly a thousand ‘genders’ that could be included.

On guard

An earlier version of the Bill risked impacting the ordinary work of churches and was strongly criticised by The Christian Institute.

Director Ciarán Kelly noted that simply reading aloud from Romans 1 could have led to accusations that a person was using the Bible to stir up hatred against gay people. He called on Christians to “guard against laws that have a chilling effect on the free exchange of views and ideas”.