Dublin’s Coalition Government has scrapped the most controversial elements of pending legislation which would have introduced hate speech into Irish law (The European Conservative). Critics of the legislation have argued it would have made the concept of ‘thought crime’ a reality in The Republic.
While she decided to leave the ‘hate crime’ parts of the legislation intact, Justice Minister Helen McEntee (Fine Gael) has now promised to remove specific proposals on incitement to hatred. As a result of this, the law will now focus on ‘hate crimes,’ such as violence with hateful motives, leaving speech unprosecuted. This means that the most egregious element of the bill will be removed.
Previously, it would have become a crime punishable by up to five years in jail to say anything, on or offline, which anybody with a protected characteristic drawn from a vague and open-ended series of such characteristics (e.g., race, gender, religion, sexuality, and so on) perceives to be ‘hateful’.
Even if cases involving ‘perceived’ incitement to hatred never reached the courts, the risk was that the investigatory process – the knock on the door, the officers of the law pushing past you into your living room, the search of your possessions, the formal interview down at the police station – would effectively become the punishment, creating a chilling effect that will in future lead the ‘perpetrator’, and all those who know the ‘perpetrator’, to self-censor.
In an echo of Ireland’s Committee on Evil Literature, which was established in 1926, and the Censorship of Publications Act which followed three years later and prohibited the sale and distribution of “unwholesome literature”, the Irish government’s brave new Hate Speech Bill would have also made it a crime, punishable by two years’ jail time, simply to “prepare or possess” material likely to incite hatred.
The bill was conceived two years ago, following riots across Ireland, when the government sought to rush through new laws ‘fit for the digital age.’ These updated policies would have included penalties for receiving ‘hateful’ content in private online messages.
Unsurprisingly, the proposals sparked a significant backlash, with X-owner Elon Musk promising to fund the legal defence of anyone harmed by the new laws. Moreover, polling demonstrated that opposition to the new laws was at around 70%.
What’s more, TDs (MPs) and senators were also unsettled by the hate speech bill’s failure to define ‘hatred.’ This would have meant that, in practice, it would be the Garda Síochána that determines what constitutes hatred based on its current, capacious definition of a hate crime as “perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender”.
As a result of this, numerous government Teachta Dálas (MPs) had called for the legislation to be summarily scrapped. These included Harris’ fellow party members Charlie Flanagan and Michael Ring as well as Fianna Fáil TDs Willie O’Dea and James O’Connor.
Reflecting on the U-turn, Independent TD Carol Nolan hailed the decision as a victory for free speech and a calamitous political and ideological defeat for Minister McEntee. This government had to be pushed into accepting the validity of basic democratic norms. Considering that Minister McEntee is now likely to remove the legislation’s incitement to violence and hatred, the eventual legislation will likely be far less draconian than originally anticipated.
As well as internal party pressure, looming parliamentary elections could have something to do with this change. The next elections to the Irish parliament must be held by the latest in March 2025. However, recent polls give Taoiseach (PM) Simon Harris a 55% approval rating, and his party, Fine Gael, a four-point climb in voter support since May. In contrast, Mary Lou McDonald’s Sinn Fein is polling at 20%, its lowest result since before the 2020 general election. This has prompted speculation that Harris will call an earlier general election.
In this context, scrapping the unpopular hate crime legislation serves to boost Harris’s popularity in a potential general election.
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