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

I am not convinced by the Minister of State's response. Towards its conclusion, he outlined the consequences of being convicted of a hate crime, including a higher sentence and being labelled as a hate criminal. It is a serious offence. Would it not make sense, therefore, to try to ensure people who are convicted of a hate crime will be people who have committed crimes actually motivated by hatred? That is explicitly not what the legislation seeks to do by using a demonstration test. If there were instead to be a motivation test, clearly, sexist, racist and hateful things being said in the aftermath of the offence itself could be taken into account in trying to determine whether a motivation was present. Requiring simply the demonstration of hatred, however, whether at the time of committing an offence or immediately before or after doing so does not, by itself, logically mean the actual act of an offence or the kind of incident many Deputies have described, such as a fight, a public order incident or whatever, was aggravated by hatred.

We are talking about a serious issue given the impact it has on someone. Obviously, we are eager to have proper legislation that will properly punish, with additional sanction, assaults and other serious crimes that are aggravated, inspired or motivated by hatred. It seems, however, that a certain shortcut is being taken that is not helpful and which means we can bring into the net, and label as hate criminals, those for whom that was not the motivation for the crime they committed, even though they may well have said something that is reprehensible, should be condemned and so on but which does not change the nature of the offence they have already committed.

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