Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

With no disrespect to the Minister of State, Deputy Dara Murphy, it is shameful that the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Fitzgerald, is not in the House to listen to the opening contributions to the debate on this important legislation. I am particularly concerned that despite the fact that the Minister had 30 minutes to deliver her opening speech on this issue yesterday, she chose to speak for only 15 minutes and did not bother to read the complete script provided to her into the record. To me, this indicates the cavalier attitude of this Government to critically important issues of civil liberties.

The Minister in her opening remarks attempted to perpetuate the idea that repression can beat terrorism. Have we really learned nothing? Repression does not stop terrorism; it spawns terrorism and the facts prove it. The Minister spoke last night about the rise of ISIS and referred to the fact that 80% of European foreign fighters are engaged in activity with ISIS. From where did ISIS come? Obviously, it arose out of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the decimation of the population there. Another breeding ground for ISIS is the break-up of Libya and interference in the civil war in Syria and so on. This is the roots of terrorism. Unless these issues are addressed, we will never have world peace.

The Minister referred last night to Turkey being a main route into the combat areas of Syria and Iraq. Why are these combat areas? It is because the West invaded and destabilised them for their own interests. We know from provisions in earlier legislation in this area, which are added to through this Bill, that civil liberties and big brother watching us is not in any way making the world a safer place, rather it is probably a more dangerous place. The Minister also spoke of those who seek to destroy our democratic society. Of what democratic society was she speaking? Is it the one in which people vote for a Government which prior to an election promises to do one thing and then does another when it gets into office? Is it an EU democracy that allows the people of Greece to vote for a different government and then seeks to blackmail that government into not fulfilling its election promises or is it the democracy that the Fianna Fáil Party wants to protect? Last night, the Fianna Fáil spokesperson talked about concern for the safety of Irish citizens from returning radicalised combatants. This is the same Fianna Fáil Party that facilitated the active use of Shannon Airport by the US military. It is beyond a joke at this stage.

This Bill transposes an EU Council Directive into Irish law and, as stated by other speakers, introduces three new offences, including provocation, recruitment and training for terrorism. It also amends the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005 while retaining all of the blithe and widely sweeping definitions of terrorism contained in the original Act, which includes phrases such as "unduly compelling a government or an international organisation to perform or abstain from performing an act", with no definition whatsoever of what makes this compulsion undue. We could have acts that might seriously destabilise the political or economic structures of the State, but no attempts to come to grips with how we define such destabilisation, which begs the question of whether protest or civil disobedience are acts that might fall under the definition of destabilising the State. Obviously, the response of Government will be that we should not worry about that but, of course, we should worry about it. There is some hypocrisy in relation to the introduction by way of this Bill of further measures to combat terrorism when on a daily basis we facilitate terrorism at Shannon. The Government has been happily complicit in US wars of imperial aggression throughout the past decade, many of which wars were illegal.

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I refer to the definitions in the 2005 Act. That Act refers to seriously intimidating populations; unduly compelling governments to perform acts; and wars which have seriously destabilised and destroyed the fundamental political, constitutional, economic and social structure of a variety of states. Does this not meet the criteria of the actions of the US military in parts of the globe or the actions of NATO? It fits perfectly with the definition of terrorist activity in the original Act but, of course, we are not really talking about that now because we have one law for one type of terrorist and another rule for all the other types of terrorist. This is not good enough. Large and imperial states have a taken for granted monopoly to engage in violent military activity, regardless of its extra legality. In fact, they are even encouraged to do so, which is crazy. That repression is maintained in the Bill.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Bill is the new offence of public provocation to commit a terrorist offence. The potential for abuse of this is absolutely rampant, given that it encourages not just directly encouraging the commission of a terrorist act but indirectly encouraging it. For example, someone might say: "I am sorry about that; I committed that act because I read something somewhere where I thought somebody meant I should do it." Is this what we are talking about? Could saying publicly that Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans have the right to resist occupation and aggression through armed struggle be construed as public provocation? Could a person who targets by direct action against corporations, government policies and inter-government organisations, like the EU, fall under the remit of this new Bill and this new definition of terrorism? This is so broad and such an invasion of our public and civil liberties. It even envisages that a charge of public provocation could be brought even when no terrorist offence was committed. What does this mean for free speech? Are we really putting into law something that says a person could be prosecuted for an offence that does not even take place? This shows how ludicrous and broad this legislation is.

I have no doubt the Government will tell us not to worry about it and that this does not cover civil disobedience or such like. The Government may argue that if somebody sits down in front of a Minister's car in a housing estate in Tallaght, that could not possibly come under the definition of provocation. I remind the Minister of State that one of the Government's backbenchers thought the activities of anti-water charges protesters were akin to those of ISIS. If this Bill is about ISIS, what is to say it cannot be used against Irish citizens? We have to look at the use of anti-provocation laws internationally - for example, the case of Eynulla Fatullayev from Azerbaijan who was convicted for incitement to terrorism in 2007 and was given a sentence of eight and a half years for writing an article about his country's support of US policies in Iran. Is this the direction we are taking? Even if not, it creates a chilling effect whereby people will self-censor. Assuring people that this is not the case will not stop somebody from thinking that he or she does not wish to be the first to be prosecuted under this legislation. Therefore, it will stifle dissent and will stifle opposition and alternative opinion. I think it is a radically disproportionate response to what is an over-stated terrorist threat.

I refer to the European Union terrorism situation and trend report in 2014. In 2013 there were no terrorist attacks in Ireland. How many religiously inspired terrorist attacks occurred in the EU in 2013? There were none. The vast majority of them were by separatist groups and took place in France and Spain and the House passing this legislation would have no impact on such events. It is a ludicrous response to a situation which has been caused by western interference in the first place.

We have to be clear and strong on these matters. International human rights law requires that any interference with a human right has to be necessary and proportionate. Interference with freedom of expression will be deemed to be necessary only if it fulfils a pressing social need. Where is the pressing social need in this situation? Under the European Convention on Human Rights, states have a certain margin within which to decide whether to curb freedom of expression through legislating to prohibit speech which seeks to incite or provoke terrorist acts. This is necessary according to circumstances and laws of each country. I do not think there is any pressing need. The so-called threat of Islamic terrorism has been exploited across the EU and internationally in order to curtail freedom, to abuse human rights, to expand the scope of state security, to increase surveillance on citizens, to militarise everyday life and to restrict freedom of movement. It certainly has not made the world a safer place because the world is more unstable now than ever because of interference and destabilisation and not because of insufficient repressive legislation.

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