Ireland Passes Watered-Down Version of Controversial Hate Crime Bill

Ireland's Minister for Justice Helen McEntee speaks at a news conference in London on Oct. 7, 2022. Peter Nicholls /Reuters

A watered-down version of a hate crime bill has passed in Ireland, scaling back on some of the more contentious provisions around hate speech after backlash from campaigners.

The bill was passed on the evening of Oct. 23, a month after Justice Minister Helen McEntee said she would not introduce hate speech provisions but would proceed with the hate crime element of the legislation.

The government said the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill will provide for increased prison sentences for certain crimes where proven to be motivated by hatred, or where hatred is demonstrated.

McEntee said in a statement, “It is not acceptable that some people live in fear simply because of who they are. Ireland is one of the last countries in the EU not to have specific hate crime offenses set out in law.”

Once signed by the president, the legislation will enshrine into law the protected identity characteristics of race, color, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, disability, gender, sex characteristics, and sexual orientation.

McEntee said that hate speech incitement to hatred offenses, “particularly in the context of modern online communications,” will be next on the lawmakers’ next agenda.

Backlash

A public backlash led by campaigners such as the Free Speech Union noted that an original clause in the bill—now removed—would have meant a risk of a five-year jail sentence for those accused of “perceived” hate speech.

X owner Elon Musk said earlier this year that he would fund any Irish legal challenges to the hate speech legislation.

Critics, however, said that the language in the new bill is vague and “definitionally dysfunctional” as there are no clear definitions of hate or gender.

Gerard Casey, former politician, academic, and president of Free Speech Ireland wrote on X on Thursday that the “Irish state has now incorporated in legislation, the highly contested central tenet of gender ideology.”

He said that “the term [‘gender’] is either not defined or, if this passage is supposed to contain a definition, it is one that is circular and so is definitionally dysfunctional.”

The language of the bill defines gender, he said, as including “the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender, or which the person identifies, which includes transgender and a gender other than those of male or female.”

“There have been countless cases of hate speech laws leading to absurd policing and sentencing outcomes in the UK, yet not one of these pitfalls was considered by the myriad NGOs that the Irish state consulted,” wrote Free Speech Ireland on X.

Riots

Last year, Ireland’s Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar pledged to accelerate laws against “hatred in general ”after rioting in Dublin.

Last November, Irish police arrested 34 people in a riot that erupted hours after a school stabbing that injured three children and a woman, leaving a 5-year-old girl in critical condition.

Riad Bouchaker, originally from Algeria, was charged with attempted murder. He was further charged with three counts of assault causing harm and the possession and production of a 14-inch kitchen knife.

“We will pass new laws in the coming weeks to enable the Gardai (police) to make better use of the CCTV evidence they collected yesterday, and also we will modernize our laws against incitement to hatred and hatred in general,” Varadkar told a news conference at the time.

“I think it’s now very obvious to anyone who might have doubted us that our incitement to hatred legislation is just not up to date. It’s not up to date for the social media age. And we need that legislation through within a matter of weeks,” he said.

The Irish government did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Reuters contributed to this report.