'The impact language has on people is huge': hate crime legislation welcomed

Death threats, threats of genocide and threats to burn Travellers out of their homes are commonplace online, Ms Carmody said. Hate speech against Travellers has become so normalised that some elected representatives even publicly use it, she said.

It drives fear in all communities and makes securing employment much more difficult for maligned groups, she said. “I definitely welcome the bill. It’s long overdue," Ms Carmody said.

“Online hate speech has a huge impact on Travellers and Traveller children, on people’s mental health and their prospects of employment. My own children see it online. They ask me, ‘Mum, why do these people hate us so much? What did we do to them?’ The impact language has on people is huge.

When people talk about killing all Travellers, about burning them out, to bring down the army and use us as a shooting range, or to bring down a slurry lorry and dump it on Travellers, it hurts people.

"Children can be carrying that hurt, those comments all the time. It makes them not want to go to school."

“It’s also difficult when it comes to employment. A young Traveller girl I know got a job she loved as a hairdresser. When she was washing someone’s hair one day someone came on the radio about Travellers. People were saying what a scourge they were on society, they were laughing and joking about Travellers. 

"They didn’t know she was a Traveller and they were talking about her parents, her aunts. She left the job out of fear they’d find out she was a Traveller. Things like that are constantly happening."

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said that she is "amending her approach" to the forthcoming Incitement to Hatred and Hate Crime Bill to make it easier to secure prosecutions and convictions for crimes motivated by hate.

The new law will legislate for hate crimes by creating new and aggravated forms of certain existing criminal offences if the offence is motivated by prejudice against one of eight protected characteristics.

Those eight protected characteristics are: 

• race, 
• colour, 
• nationality, 
• religion, 
• ethnic or national origin, 
• sexual orientation, 
• gender (including gender expression and identity), 
• disability.

The new law will also update the previous 1989 legislation on hate speech to reflect the current context more accurately; including online hateful content.

Minister McEntee will now include a ‘demonstration test’ in the investigation of hate crimes which will be an additional/alternative test to the ‘motivation test’ as previously outlined in the General Scheme of the Bill, which was published in 2021.

Adam Long, Board Director of the National LGBT Federation (NXF), also welcomed the legislation and the timeline given for it.

He said that the legislation was necessary. As recently as the Dublin Pride celebrations last month, a number of LGBTI+ young people attending the parade were seriously assaulted, he said. And online hate speech is serving to amplify fear and violence, he said.

“We stand virtually alone in the Western World for not having any hate crime legislation," he said. 

"This really ends Ireland’s outlier status. In light of the very serious surge in homophobic and transphobic attacks, it’s definitely very much needed.

“But the legislation can’t merely be symbolic, it has to be effective. The addition of the demonstration test, as announced today, will make it easier to prosecute hate crime.

"The criminal justice aspect is very important because we don’t have that type of law at the moment, but there also has to be a cultural shift. You see the proliferation of online hate and extremism, that is a global problem but Ireland unfortunately is not immune from it.

"There has to be a public awareness and educational element to it too."