Irish Govt’s hate crime Bill may be abandoned before election

The Irish Government’s ‘hate speech’ Bill is divisive and may be left to “die off”, Cabinet sources have reported.

Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, a senior minister said the Bill has “run into the sand – and it won’t be coming out of the sand before the general election. That Bill has no friends in the market, I’m afraid. It was ill-conceived and we will let it die off.”

The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, which is being considered by the Seanad, would significantly expand and replace existing hate crime legislation in Ireland. It includes a new offence of inciting hatred against others based on their protected characteristics, which carries a possible five-year prison sentence.

Controversy

Another source claimed that following Leo Varadkar’s resignation, a lot of “virtue-signalling” proposals “went by the wayside”.

“And in the time-honoured way of killing off legislation, the Government whips in the Dáil and Seanad won’t be giving any more momentum to this thing.”

But Taoiseach Simon Harris disputed such claims, stating that Justice Minister Helen McEntee will “shortly” bring forward amendments to tackle the Bill’s impact on free speech.

He emphasised that “we will legislate for hate crime in this country, and I hope and expect we’ll be able to do so in the lifetime of this Government”.

‘Nonsense’

Senator Gerard Craughwell urged the Government to ditch the Bill, saying: “Introducing the nonsense hate speech Bill at this stage would be a monumental act of self-harm.”

He explained: “In the Seanad, I drew attention to the discrepancies between what the minister thought was in the Bill and what was actually in the Bill, along with the dangers of failing to define the word ‘hate’ in the legislation.

“Since then, Minister McEntee has done little to inspire confidence in anyone.”

‘Bin it’

Earlier this year, Carol Nolan TD also warned that the Bill must be “binned, not just recycled”.

She said that despite Justice Minister Helen McEntee’s pledge that the proposals will be amended to address free speech concerns, there does not appear to be “any substantive rethink of the fundamentally wrong-headed approach” to changing the law.

Mrs Nolan added: “The very vagueness of the Bill is itself a potential form of violence against the personal and professional reputations of those who refuse to shape their speech to meet Government or EU standards of acceptable discourse.”