Dr. Seamus Taylor:

I thank the Deputy. He summarised the situation very well. One of the challenges is that although it is very laudable to bring incitement to hatred and hate crime into one overall Bill, they have quite distinct features. With incitement to hatred, the speech is the offence in itself, whereas, as the Deputy has correctly pointed out, in hate crime, there is a base criminal offence, such as assault, and the hate dimension is an aggravation, if, for example, a hostile slur is used at the time. Speech on its own is the offence for incitement to hatred while hate crime involves a base criminal offence that is aggravated by the hate dimension. That makes it quite challenging.

I am firmly of the view, based on my experience and research, that a practical way through the regular hate crime is by accommodating the demonstration of hostility and accepting that as a valid test of proof. It makes motivation real because it gives one a standard to judge it by. It gives one an empirical actual reality. That is why I believe that the demonstration test is valid.

I am not an expert on incitement to hatred. Many of the provisions that are proposed strike me as reasonable in terms of incitement to hatred. I would particularly commend the proposal to introduce a test of recklessness into the incitement provisions. I think that is a significant improvement on what existed before. However, I share the valid point made by Mr. Collins about political discourse and what legitimate parameters can be and could be considered to be placed around hateful political discourse. I do not consider myself an expert on the incitement part of the Bill. My expertise rests in the regular hate crime area more.