Minister McEntee launches findings of public consultation on Hate Speech and Hate Crime and commits to drafting new Legislation
- Minister McEntee launches findings of wide ranging consultation which received over 3,600 submissions
- Consultation report is an important step towards new hate crime laws for Ireland
- Minister commits to bring Draft Legislation to Cabinet by Easter
Public Consultation Findings
Drawing on the findings from the public consultation, as well as the qualitative data gathered in the stakeholder workshops, the report proposes ten conclusions:
1. The 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act is not effective in dealing with incitement to hatred and should be replaced by a single piece of legislation to deal with both incitement to hatred and hate crime.
2. The characteristics protected by the new legislation should include all of those listed in the 1989 Act, and also gender, gender expression or identity, and disability.
3. The definition of ‘ethnicity’ in the new legislation should explicitly include membership of the Travelling Community on the same footing as other ethnicities.
4. New offences of incitement to hatred are needed and should prohibit:
(i) deliberately or recklessly inciting hatred against a person or group of people due to their association with a protected characteristic; and,
(ii) displaying or distributing material inciting hatred.
5. The new legislation should contain robust safeguards for freedom of expression, such as protections for reasonable and genuine contributions to literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic discourse, and fair and accurate reporting.
6. Thresholds for criminal incitement to hatred should be high, for example incitement to harm or unlawful discrimination, However, it should not be necessary to show that anyone was actually influenced by the incitement or persuaded to act upon it.
7. A company accused of displaying or distributing hateful material should be able to defend itself by showing that it has reasonable measures in place to prevent dissemination of this type of material in general, was complying with those measures at the time, was unaware, and had no reason to suspect that this particular content was inciteful.
8. To be meaningful, the new legislation must also deal effectively with hate crime. Threatening and abusive communications, criminal damage, harassment, assault and intimidation are all common forms of hate crime as described by participants in this consultation and specific, aggravated forms of existing criminal offences should be included in the legislation to deal with these and ensure that such crimes are properly categorised and recorded.
9. Additional elements may be needed to help ensure the new legislation is effective, such as allowing alternative verdicts for juries where the aggravating ‘hate’ element is not proven, and including a general provision (for crimes that are not specific hate offences) to say that a court will always consider whether hate should be an aggravating factor in sentence and, where it is, that this will be reflected in the record.
10. Not every hate incident is serious enough to be a crime - many incidents are better dealt with outside the criminal sphere and proper measures to ensure this happens will be needed.
What about the fundamental right to freedom of expression?
All legislative proposals are developed and put forward bearing in mind the provisions of the Constitution and our human rights obligations including those contained in the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003.
The right to freedom of expression will therefore be fully considered in the development and drafting of any new legislation by the Office of the Attorney General.
Department of Justice, maintaining and enhancing community security and promoting a fair society through a range of policies and high quality services.
www.justice.ie
www.irishtimes.com
www.theguardian.com
