Dr. Seamus Taylor:

I thank Deputy Pringle. In my experience, relying on a legal test of motivation alone will be very challenging. It will give for very limited effectiveness in the law and it could give for ineffective law. The Department of Justice recognised this and said so in a public document in December last. It stated that without a way through it, it could be very hard to make this law work.

The way through it, I believe, is by having more than one limb to the test of proof. Rather than relying solely on proving motivation, which is about getting into the mind of the perpetrator, I believe we can learn both from the North of Ireland and from England and Wales in terms of what they have done. They have much longer experience. This is not to hold up everything in England and Wales as good and hold up Ireland, which traditionally has often been done, as all bad. We know that we could pick any range of public policy issues and the comparison works the other way. We only have to observe some of the recent experience in relation to the handling of Covid in Britain compared to here.

However, on hate crime policy and practice, it is fair to say that England and Wales are leaders globally and they are recognised as such by the UN supporting UNHCR resources on the ground with experts on mission, SURGE, committee, by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, and by EU Fundamental Rights Agency, FRA, in terms of their legal provision, their policy and the practices. Therefore, we can learn from very-near neighbours.

In the UK, they have two limbs to their legal test of proof: proving motivation; and-or proving a demonstration. The demonstration limb allows you to take into account evidence of demonstrated hostility at or around the-----