New hate-crime legislation in place ‘by end of year’

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said new hate-crime legislation should be enacted by the end of the year as there was cross-party support “in general”.

Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast and RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland, Ms McEntee said the new legislation would provide “teeth” to combat hate crime and make it easier to secure convictions.

The aim was to ensure offences on the basis of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, gender and disability would carry an enhanced penalty compared to the ordinary offence, she said.

Any conviction for such an offence would clearly state the offence was motivated by hatred — that it was a hate crime, the Minister said, adding: “we all have a right to be safe, to feel safe.”

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The new legislation — the Incitement to Hatred and Hate Crime Bill — will send a clear message that such offences were not acceptable and that there would be penalties, Ms McEntee said. The previous legislation, which was introduced in 1989, did not have teeth, she said, and there had been only 50 convictions since it was introduced.

The new Bill contained “a specific set of characteristics”. There would be clear safeguards to protect free speech and debate, but a high bar would have to be created, the Minister said, adding she wanted hate crime and incitement to commit acts of violence to be prosecutable.

[ Stronger laws against hate crimes planned to make convictions easier ]

The legislation would cover all forms of media, including online and social media, and hosting companies were “onboard” with the new legislation and knew they would have to show they made every effort to remove offending content, Ms McEntee said.

Work on the new Bill started in 2019, and there had been consultation with different groups and individuals, she said. There had been pre-legislative scrutiny, which led to recommendations that she “took on board”.

“There are people living in this country at this moment in time who are not living their lives as they should simply because of fear,” the Minister said.

“We all have a right to feel safe and to be safe. For somebody to feel unsafe simply because of who they are — their race, their religion, the colour of their skin, their sexual orientation — it’s not a society that I want to live in, and it’s not what we should be tolerating.”

Ms McEntee will bring forward a new hate crimes and hate speech Bill in the autumn, which will create new “aggravated” versions of existing offences, where those offences are motivated by prejudice against a “protected characteristic” of the victim. The protected characteristics will include race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, gender (including gender expression and identity) and disability.

If a court is satisfied that an offence – for example an assault – against a person is motivated by the perpetrator’s prejudice on the grounds of one of these characteristics, the perpetrator can be found guilty of a hate crime.

It is expected the new offence would contain harsher penalties than similar offences without a hate motivation.

An objective “demonstration test” – where guilt can be established if the perpetrator uses, for example, racial language or other evidence of hate against the victim – will be included as part of the legislation.

The prosecution will have to show that the perpetrator of a crime demonstrated hatred towards a member of a protected group, or towards a person with a protected characteristic, at the time of the offence.