Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amendments are of critical importance. As I and others have noted during the course of the debate, both inside and outside Houses, the Bill has a deeply totalitarian undercurrent. Its enactment would severely damage and limit legitimate constitutional rights, including the right to protest and freedom of expression. In the past, some have attempted to portray the Bill, like the hate speech Bill, as an effort to address the extremities of freedom of expression. There is a debate to be had on where the limits of legitimate speech and expression begin and end, but the Bill has, from the get-go, attempted to distort its true impact by referring to extreme cases. In fact, it will impact the most ordinary forms of expression of viewpoints. It will criminalise a particular ethical and human rights-grounded worldview. For this reason, it is discriminatory.

Amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 7 are an effort to challenge the severity of the Bill. The Bill remains inherently discriminatory and is, therefore, unacceptable in a supposedly democratic republic. It has been pointed out several times that even Garda Commissioner Drew Harris felt that specific safe zone access areas legislation was gratuitous due to the existence of public order laws. This very rational and correct observation by the Garda Commissioner was dismissed at the time. When the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, spoke in this House on 10 February 2022 he said that a view had been expressed to him through the avenue of legal opinion, and held by An Garda Síochána, that additional powers were not required and the current powers were sufficient. The Minister stated that this was not a view he agreed with or accepted. He said the Government was legislating and that this was happening. This showed a serious arrogance from the Minister, in addition to showing that he cares more about ideological point scoring then he does about the expert opinion of our national police force. His comments also undermined the authority of An Garda Síochána. In the same debate, the Minister said An Garda Síochána believed it had comprehensive powers.

I refer to these comments because they are indicative of the Government's cynical attitude towards the public. The Government got a very rude awakening with the results of the referendums held on 8 March. They showed that the public is not being led by the nose by the NGOs, which are self-appointed oracles of the general will. The Bill before the House is yet another example of the Government deliberately confusing the views of the public at large with the fringe and unrepresentative views of hard-core lobby groups and NGOs.

Without amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 7, there is no guarantee the Bill would not criminalise people who organise protests, marches or other events in cities and towns throughout Ireland. The Government is keen to deceptively depict such protests or marches as some sort of mob descending on a GP clinic or a hospital. That is not what I am referring to, however. I am referring to the fact that at present it is physically impossible to organise a march to go from one end of O'Connell Street to the other without inadvertently or unwittingly falling within the 100 m zone as a building would be designated as a safe access zone.

I take O'Connell Street as an example because it is a pertinent street in our capital city. It is regularly the site of protests, marches and public activities. This is right and good in a free society. The GPO was captured in 1916 and a republic was proclaimed by Pádraig Pearse and others. The idea was to establish a democratic republic that would guarantee religious and civic liberties, equal rights and equal opportunities for all our citizens.

The Bill is repugnant to a principle espoused in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic because it actively discriminates against one section of the public, namely those who hold a pro-life, ethical and moral outlook and who wish to express this in public, as is their right. Today, the Government has betrayed the republican idea that we live in a free country that cherishes all the children of the nation equally. The Bill would criminalise legitimate protest and pro-life activity that happens unwittingly to pass by a designated premises. In Dublin each year there is a march for life. There is one next week. It attracts 1,000 or more participants who pass peacefully through the city centre. If the Bill is enacted, there are concerns that events such as the march for life would be prescribed on a purely ideological basis.

The response to such concerns has mostly been to ignore them. Instead there is a laser focus on the inflated issue of harassment, which, it is said, cannot be tackled in any way other than through the Bill. This is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. In some cases these concerns have been dismissed as not falling within the intention of the Bill. We all know this is how the law works. Dismissing this awkward implication of the Bill as not being the intention of its authors reminds me strongly of that famous neologism "durable relationship". The most recent effort to introduce widely ambiguous wording into our Constitution got a serious drubbing in the referendum on 8 March.It was well deserved. Most of my colleagues in this House were happy to try to spoof the electorate with promises that such ambiguous wording was a small price to pay to modernise the Constitution, but their reckless rush to amend our Constitution was decisively rejected by the electorate. Now we are seeing yet another attempt here today to dismiss serious concerns about the Orwellian overreach of this Bill by simply refusing to engage with the points raised by these amendments.