Hate speech affects all of us

Hate speech is a knife that can be weilded against any group of people. If you think that people you don't like deserve it - well, consider for a moment that there are other people who think you deserve it too.

But there are also a lot of people who believe that no one deserves to be treated like that. That hate speech ultimately serves the purpose of silencing others, making them fearful of speaking up, instead of having a productive conversation.

Unfortunately, at the moment our laws don't provide much protection against hate speech. Most of the time people who say that you should be deprived of something are getting away with it without any consequences. This needs to change.

Where are we now?

Since the time Prohibition of Incitement To Hatred Act, 1989 was passed, there were a few attempts to augment it, and a lot of work by both the government and human rights organisations.

Criminal Justice (Aggravation by Prejudice) Bill 2016 was aiming to allow the criminal code to account for hatred as a component of a crime. But it was abandoned.

On 23 October 2019, the government launched a public consultation on the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989. Many human rights organizations participated and provided their input on how the new legislation should look like. You can read the published submissions and the report on the goverment's website.

The Coalition Against Hate Crime was formed, to further cooperate on shaping the bill. Participant organizations have published their own reports on the situation in Ireland, and their position on the proposed bill.

In April 2021, the General Scheme for the bill was forwarded for pre-legislative scrutiny. After a year of work and consultations, the PLS report was published (you can read it here).

Then, in November 2022, the bill itself was published and debated in Dáil Éireann.

Right now the bill is in Seanad and has a few more stages to go through.