Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his kind words. I will start by thanking colleagues here for the very kind words of sympathy they expressed in this House last Friday after the death of my father. Our family appreciates that very much indeed. Thank you.

Today I would like to say a little bit about the Government's proposed hate speech legislation, the criminal justice (hate crime) Bill 2021, the general scheme of which was published recently. I have concerns around the idea that the penalty for certain crimes increases where satisfactory evidence is brought, for example, of an underlying attitude of racism or any other attitudes towards protected groups. I am concerned that this would create an imbalance in our criminal law with the potential to create a hierarchy of victims. It seems to me that if a person assaults somebody because of a love of violence or hate for the other person's family, it is no more or no less serious than if a person assaults somebody because of underlying racist attitudes. The mistake we are at risk of making is between punishing people's acts, which we must always do, and tackling the evil attitudes that underlie such acts, which are really a matter for education and public education. I do not believe we can legislate to punish people for particular attitudes that society at a particular moment in time wants to condemn. There is a danger that we will create an imbalance or a hierarchy of victims. I believe we need to think about this very carefully. We should have a discussion about it. I assume the proposed Bill will go to pre-legislative scrutiny. I speak in the context of the legislation in the House before Christmas, the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020. However important and valid the issues it was seeking to deal with, the legislation went through the House far too quickly and I feel that we did not do our job properly as a legislature in considering the detail of it.

One particular issue in this proposed Bill leapt off the page to me, which is that head 3 proposes an offence of incitement to hatred. Essentially, this modernises and adapts the provisions of the 1989 Act with regard to statements designed to stir up hatred. I am all in favour of that modification of the law but it goes on to say that it shall be a defence where it can be shown that the communications are a "reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic discourse." A notable omission is religious discourse. I find this remarkable because there is particular protection in our Constitution for the practice and free expression of religion. By leaving this out of the acceptable defences it seems to me there is a disease of wokeness around somewhere when such legislation is being planned. First of all, people are not thinking about what the Constitution requires. Second, it does not even accord the same level of protection to religious discourse as it would to political or other named categories of discourse.

There was a troubling video online recently of an elderly man in England who was reading the Bible from a soapbox. He was arrested in a gruff manner by the police under hate speech laws. Nobody was offended by what he had said and people were objecting to what the police were doing. We need to be careful here. Is there to be a hierarchy of people in our society who have the right to free speech? Is there a hierarchy of victims when it comes to punishing crimes? We need a discussion on this issue. I hope this proposed Bill goes to pre-legislative scrutiny. I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on this where Members can respectfully exchange ideas and do our work on this very important area that will impact in a big way on our culture.