Helen McEntee: New Bill will make it easier to secure hate crime convictions

A new Bill will make it easier to secure convictions for hate speech and hate crimes, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said.

Currently hate speech is covered by the 1989 prohibition of incitement to hatred act.

The new Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill has been touted by the Government as making it easier to secure convictions and to update the law for the modern era.

Ms McEntee told RTE Morning Ireland that there were people in Ireland “living in fear” because of who they are.

“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”, she said.

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

She said that Ireland needed a law that “has teeth” to deal with hate crimes.

“We have a law from 1989, it was quite forward thinking at the time, it’s an incitement to hatred law”, she said.

“There have only been 50 convictions for incitement to hatred since that was introduced, so we need a law that has teeth, that you can prosecute, but we also need a law around hate crimes.

“Obviously, it’s a crime to assault someone, it’s a crime to damage someone’s property, to harass someone, but while a judge can take an aggravating factor of hate into account – it’s not on our statute book, it’s not the law.”

She said the new law would allow hate to be taken into account, and to lead to a tougher penalty on conviction,

“So what I’m introducing are new hate crimes with a specific set of characteristics, so where someone is motivated by hate of an individual or group of people because of those characteristics: so it’s race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, the colour of their skin, sexual orientation, gender, or disability; then this can be taken into account, and it means a tougher penalty on conviction”, she said.

She added that the Bill would take into account the defence that someone did not intend to incite hatred by their words or actions.

“So this is where a person intentionally says something, does something that would incite another person to hate that person or group of people, or to to commit violence against them”, she said.

“We are changing that to someone intentionally or recklessly because sometimes you can say something, and you might say ‘I didn’t mean it’, but if you still carry through knowing that your intentions may have had those consequences, then that is what we’re looking at here.”

She added that the legislation will cover “all forms of media”, including print, radio, social media, and online publishers.