Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a short observation. I was just thinking, regarding respect for people providing services and respect for authority, etc., that we did have a blasphemy Act in this country which was struck off the Statute Book. I could not understand why at the time. I asked the question many times then and in many locations if I was the odd one out. That Act was there for a purpose, but it was abolished. Now, we must reintroduce a similar Act. The first one covered religious hatred and religious incitement. It meant something to somebody because of their religion, their colour or whatever the case may be. We now have the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022; we are bringing the same thing back in again.

What we need to remember, though, is that when I inquired about why we were doing this in the first place the answer was freedom of expression. This theory has grown to the extent now that everybody thinks they have the right to freely express their view on somebody else. They do not and we do not and we should not, because what we may want to express may be an insult to somebody else. God knows that we in this country should have enough experience of dealing with religious bigotry and so on and so forth across this island. We should certainly have a reminder of what that is about. The proposed new Act will hopefully address some of the issues we have been talking about in a different way, particularly where threats are made regularly.

These could be on a religious basis or on the basis of age, and I am conscious of this myself even. Ageism is illegal but there are some people who practise it all the time. Sexism is illegal but some people practise it all the time. This is a means of putting the other person in a lower position and the perpetrator in a dominant position. We live and learn. I ask people to remember that as we go forward we must confront some of these things being presented nowadays in a way they were not confronted before. This does not mean to say that we are going to fight in the streets but we must introduce the legislation to protect the people who are doing a job. Otherwise, the possibility of holding onto staff will be affected. There are enough reasons already why we have difficulty holding onto staff without adding another one or two. Fear is one aspect that we should not have to put up with at all in the workplace. I thank the Chair.