‘Hate crime Bill will overwhelm gardaí with admin’, Irish Govt warned

The Irish Government risks keeping gardaí desk-bound under its hate crime Bill, a rank-and-file representative has said.

Detective Garda Ferris, an official of the professional association for police officers in the Republic of Ireland, believes time-consuming ‘hate crime’ investigations will take gardaí away from street-level policing.

Currently at Committee Stage in the Seanad, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 has already proved unpopular with the public and branded ‘a threat to free speech’ by critics.

‘Subjective’

Gda Ferris warned: “This bill when enacted could significantly expand the workload of ordinary gardaí as it would appear to create an opaque legal climate where offences will be a matter of subjective interpretation”.

Each reported offence, he argued, would require “a laborious and time-consuming investigation”.

it would appear to create an opaque legal climate where offences will be a matter of subjective interpretation

In May, during the passage of the Bill through the Dáil, Paul Murphy TD said it was in danger of criminalising someone in possession of supposedly ‘hateful material’, even if it remained private and harmed nobody.

And during a subsequent Seanad debate, Senators expressed fears that people would rather remain silent on ‘controversial’ issues than run the risk of prosecution.

Public opposition

In her opening speech to Senators at the debate in June, Justice Minister Helen McEntee cited “a 29% increase in reported ‘hate crimes’ in 2022 compared to the previous year”.

She continued: “It is hard to believe that despite increasing instances of hate crime and general support from the public to criminalise such acts, Ireland does not have hate crime laws in place” before going on to accuse “fringe commentators” of sowing “deliberate misinformation and distortion”.

At a subsequent press conference, she was challenged by a reporter who reminded her that “of the thousands of replies to your own Government’s public consultation, 73 per cent were negative and according to the last poll done on the subject, 65 per cent of people oppose such laws”.