Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The House is asked to support the adoption of an EU Council proposal to extend the list of EU crimes to all forms of hate crime and hate speech, whether based on race, religion, gender or sexuality. The European Parliament and EU Council can establish rules concerning the definition of "criminal offences and sanctions", as they are recommending. The framework decision requires member states to criminalise hate speech, that is, public incitement to violence or hatred on grounds of race, colour, religion, descent, or national or ethnic origin. It also requires member states to ensure for offences other than hate speech that such racist and xenophobic motivation is considered as an aggravating circumstance or alternatively that such motivation can be taken into account in determining the penalties.

Hate crimes and hate speech are very important matters for our times. We look forward to the legislation coming before the House so that we can deal with these in more detail. These matters go to the core of our humanity, the essence of being a person that all people can be in essence themselves without being abused, harassed or denigrated because of the race, religion, gender or sexuality that they are entitled to be. It goes to the core of the value systems of the European Union that in Europe all our people can be themselves, express themselves and rejoice in their own uniqueness without fear. That is the hope and we need to ensure that we can create as far as we can a framework to make that a reality.

This is, of course, a new situation. In my period in this House, we have seen Ireland transformed. The Ireland I grew up in was largely monocultural and mono-religious. It was enormously intolerant of difference. It was male-dominated, oppressive of same-sex love and, at best, suspicious of different races. Sometimes it was far more than suspicious and was downright hostile and violent. That has greatly changed. Through our own efforts we have largely transformed our society. However, we still have a long way to go to make that vision of a truly equal society a reality.

Europe also has other voices. We hear too often the increased drumbeat of the far-right nationalist voices. Those core values that we hold dear and that have been hard won and recently won are not guaranteed to last. Just as the unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia has jolted all of us from complacency on the issue of an enduring peace on our Continent, which we thought was a fixed reality, so too must we be ever-vigilant in the defence of the values of tolerance and willing to be heard on those who would divide us as a people and our continent on racial, religious, gender or sexual-orientation grounds.

We still marginalise certain ethnic groups in our own community, including Travellers. Although we have clear legislation and have walked a long distance towards having a truly inclusive society, much more remains to be done. There are still the snide comments as well as the bad and wrong use of language. All these things are part of our experience but there are things that go well beyond that into the realm of the wholly unacceptable and for those we need to be clear. The platforms available now for social discourse are new and the level of abuse out there must be regulated and dealt with. Coco's law was one step in doing that last year and I thank the Minister for her support in doing that but we need to go much further. I welcome the suggestion she has made in this debate.

We will support this motion and look forward to enactment of concrete legislation that will underpin it for the future.

See this speech in context