The Oireachtas Justice Committee has heard of the devastating impact of hate crime on affected communities Pavee Point and from other members of the Coalition Against Hate Crime Ireland. The Committee met as legislation to outlaw hate crime and review incitement to hatred provisions is being prepared. Photo – Jenny Liston, Pavee Point speaking at Oireachtas Committee.
“Pavee Point has advocated for many years for effective legislation which acknowledges that hate speech and hate crime exist in Ireland with devastating impacts for victims. Travellers, Roma, and other groups need protection under the law and this protection must be meaningful and effective,” said Martin Collins, Co Director, Pavee Point.
In our opening statement we cover a number of areas of the proposed legislation and Mr. Collins highlighted the need for the legislation to be victim focused –
“If the legislation is to be effective, it is important that it includes both a demonstration and a motivation test of proof for hate crime offences. This would ensure an effective legal remedy, where demonstrations of hate (such as hostile language, gestures, communications etc) would be admissible as evidence of demonstrating hostility[1].
“Relying on a motivation test alone could result in difficulties enforcing the legislation. It can be difficult to prove people’s thinking/motivation and this could lead to low levels of prosecution, as we saw with the Incitement to Hatred Act 1989.”
See our full submission here.
Fiona Hurley, Policy and Communications Manager at Nasc Migrant and Refugee Rights, said:
“Nasc have a long history of anti-racism work and have been actively engaged in calling for Hate Crime and Hate Speech legislation for over a decade. We are pleased to see progress being made on legislation however, this legislation is only one step towards tackling racism and other prejudices in Irish society.”
Dr Jennifer Schweppe European Centre for the Study of Hate stated:
“In our research we have consistently shown that the absence of hate crime legislation in Ireland has led to what we refer to as the ‘disappearing’ of the hate element of a crime through the criminal process. We have also found that courts have treated offences as racially aggravated in the absence of any evidence that racism was involved in the commission of the offence.”
The OSCE ODIHR has released its annual data on hate crime in participating States. Once again, no official data was made available by Ireland while both the UN and the Council of Europe called for the introduction of an improved mechanism to collect disaggregated data on hate crime in Ireland. Coalition member INAR (Irish Network Against Racism) recorded 159 incidents of hate crime looking only at racialised and ethnic groups, through their alternative reporting mechanism “iReport” in 2020.
[1] Consultation with Lord Mayor of Dublin (2021) How to tackle hate crime and protect our people https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i73hjnBf0AI