Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 6, line 7, to delete “ “hatred” means hatred” and substitute “ “hatred” means a state of mind characterised as intense and irrational emotions of opprobrium, enmity, and detestation rooted in bias, prejudice or hostility”.

We are going to withdraw amendment No. 1. I will speak to amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4. As a general remark while I have the time, and to be clear, we are in favour of hate crime legislation but we want to see it done correctly. We want to ensure that there are no issues in terms of basic issues of civil liberties here. That is what are aiming to achieve with our amendments. In particular, instead of the term "hatred", instead of an action or speech by someone causing hatred in the mind of another, we seek to be more specific by substituting "intimidation, hostility or discrimination", in other words, to specify that this is something that generates, in another person, something that could have an actual victim as a consequence, an action that would result from that. Something we are eager to avoid, and we will come to this in a more substantive discussion later on in respect of amendment No. 6, is the creation of thought crimes. We want to see that there are definite negative consequences as a result of the hate speech we are talking about here. That is the purpose of these amendments.

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