Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to make a contribution on this Stage of the Bill. I welcome the Bill and I am grateful to the Minister for Justice for bringing it forward. Since her time in this office she has relentlessly pursued this much-needed and long overdue Bill and that is a phrase that will be used by most contributors at this stage; it is long overdue. It is a difficult Bill in some regards but it is the most basic and easiest Bill in other regards. This is about stopping the spread of hate in whichever form it comes, particularly when it is premeditated hate that is directly and centrally organised and when it is used, as we have so often and sadly seen, as part of a wider process that sadly leads to the worst possible consequences.

I have been extremely concerned about some people outside of this Chamber who have raised opposition to this Bill. They have tried to bring it into a wider debate and fit it into some sort of culture war they want to talk about when they say free speech is constantly under attack, that the Bill is preventing the right to offend, or that it is preventing the right to poke fun and everything else like that. However, it is quite clear that this Bill does not seek to do that. This Bill comes from a far better place. Sadly we often see that the people talking about the defence of free speech and saying they will not let themselves be cancelled are the first people to try to shut down an argument and baulk at the fact that they are being challenged.

I welcome this good legislation but I raise my concerns about how we can ensure it works best to prevent hate speech and protect the victims. As Deputy Ó Ríordáin said, when it comes to those who may be found guilty of a hate crime the intention must be to ensure it does not happen again, not just by cancelling or punishing them but by rehabilitating them and ensuring that it is policed properly. One area that will be raised by pretty much every contributor is the ongoing concern, that is topical this week due to a different issue, with the platform that is being used most widely and perhaps freely to spread hate speech in social media. This is nothing new; hate speech has always existed over time and people have always found the most contemporary and accessible platform to spread hate. Those people are in a severe minority but they exist, they deserve to be called out and they are not always acting ignorantly or with less ulterior motives.

There are a couple of areas that need to follow on in tandem with this legislation or that are directly strengthened by the legislation but I would like to raise the following matter first. This is something I have raised with the Minister during the last two budgetary cycles, namely resources for An Garda Síochána to tackle and monitor things online. That does not just come down to hate speech. We have subversive organisations and criminal entities organising online and using online platforms to communicate and exchange information and arrangements. That is an area that is constantly evolving and providing a constant threat when we look at the area of cybercrime and cyber-attacks. On a smaller scale we must ensure the ICT resources of An Garda Síochána and other agencies of the State are constantly funded, improved upon and evolving because one can never stand still when it comes to something like this.

Equally and in tandem with that there has to be an approach of working hand-in-hand or in a directed motive towards the social media companies that are acting as platforms and publishing agencies for so much of the hate speech we seek to tackle in this Bill. Every Member of this House has been attacked online at one point or another and has been a victim of hate speech. There are different degrees of this. The majority of Deputies in the Chamber at the moment are women and they get it far worse than men. If we fail to acknowledge that as men we fail to identify what is a clear societal problem that needs to be tackled through education and that also needs strict legislation on hate speech to ensure such carry on cannot continue. We see it regularly when it comes to race, religion and personal appearance where it is not just poking fun but directing hate and these online motives sadly lead to more difficult situations in the real world. It is often hate speech that makes the vocation we have all chosen to enter so unappealing to so many people, and that has such worrying consequences.

That is why I fundamentally agree that the continuing practice of anonymity online is one that is truly worrying. The fact is that multiple accounts can be continually set up by the same entity or individual in order to allow them to continue to pursue a clear campaign of hate. You can use any sort of anecdotal evidence to this that you want or you can use the direct evidence that shows the serious amount of hate crimes that are happening in this jurisdiction. The fact is that the vast majority are consistently going online on social media platforms that do not care. How many times have we had to report to various social media companies about comments and threats to ourselves, other people, our family members, organisations we work with and people we advocate on behalf of as public representatives, only to see the constant spewing bilge of uneducated nastiness that is pure premeditated hate?

The social media companies say the actions do not violate their terms and conditions. It is a phrase that turns me blue in the face every time I hear it about ten times a day when returning to my office, to the extent that I think they want us to stop reporting things.

We must ensure that we have legislation, which I believe we have, that is flexible and watertight. It must ensure that a responsibility is placed on these social media companies to actually live up to their end of the bargain and their obligations under law. The ramifications for companies that do not abide by the law of this jurisdiction must be real and must be demonstrated to a population that is becoming increasingly concerned and worried about entering into the public fray or debate due to the fact that the response of co-ordinated hatred is so willfully allowed by too many platforms.

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