Ireland’s new Taoiseach Simon Harris has reiterated his commitment to passing an amended version of Ireland’s authoritarian new hate speech bill before the next general election, despite numerous Teachta Dálas calling for it to be summarily scrapped in the wake of Scotland’s disastrous experiment with similar legislation (breakingnews.ie, The European Conservative).
Under the country’s new Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, which is currently before the upper house of the Oireachtas, it will 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’.
Troublingly, the draft legislation contains no definition of “hate”, which means that once the Bill is passed it will, in the first instance, 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”.
Even if cases involving ‘perceived’ incitement to hatred never reach the courts, the risk is 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 – effectively becomes 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 will also make it a crime, punishable by two years’ jail time, simply to “prepare or possess” material likely to incite hatred.
“Possession” in this context could simply mean having a dodgy meme or cartoon saved on your phone, or a copy of The Turner Diaries or Mein Kampf stored on your laptop. These and other, similar cultural artefacts will undoubtedly fall within the ambit of the Garda, since the bill reverses the usual burden of proof, and presumes “that the material [is] not intended for personal use”, and that you must be planning to disseminate it, unless you can prove otherwise.
Any attempt to frustrate the authorities in their pursuit of ‘unwholesome literature’ won’t get tech-savvy Irish citizens very far, either, since the legislation includes a provision that makes it a crime to refuse to give the Garda a password to any electronic device that you own.
The Taoiseach’s reiteration of his commitment to the bill’s passage comes as Scotland’s own newly enacted hate crime legislation is causing a flood of ‘hate crime’ reports which have put undue pressure on police, who are left unable to handle an increasing number of shoplifting cases, sexual assaults, and car thefts.
No doubt in part inspired by these messages — alongside the unmitigated disaster unfolding in Scotland — numerous government Teachta Dálas (MPs) have called for the legislation to be summarily scrapped. These include Harris’ fellow party members Charlie Flanagan and Michael Ring as well as Fianna Fáil TDs Willie O’Dea and James O’Connor.
Harris claimed to find this “a little unusual” considering the fact that the bill was in the legislative programme for this parliamentary year, and around 90% of TDs had voted for the legislation in 2023.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne, the Fine Gael leader said that he had decided to pass the bill before March 22, 2025—the last possible legal date for holding a general election.
“I have made a decision that we are going to pass a law in this space [of time], I’m very clear on that,” he said.
“Hate crime is not a pretend crime, it is a very real thing. If I want to be tough on law and order and support the Gardaí [the Garda Síochána, Ireland’s police and security service], that means supporting the Gardaí in pursuing all crimes, including hate crimes … So we will pass the Bill. The Bill will be amended and the Bill will seek to address significant concerns that have been made.”
