Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to discuss these proposed amendments. There has been a lot of play-acting, for want of a better term, and misrepresenting of various positions in respect of this legislation, which has undergone quite an amount of debate in this House and publicly. I wish to state very clearly that there is a distinction to be drawn here. I refer to those who rightly recognise that there is a requirement for legislation in the area of hate crime to be updated. It is possible to believe this and to also believe this Bill is bad legislation being rushed through the Oireachtas in the dying days of a bad Government.

I wish to be clear regarding Sinn Féin's perspective concerning hate speech, in particular. This is a small but significant subset of hate crimes and the area where regulation was always going to be the most difficult issue to tackle. This is because we must be careful in regard to the ability of this legislation to be misused by any government, now or in future, as a vehicle to censor. As a party, we in Sinn Féin have officially been censored in the past. Our members have seen harassment, violence and persecution meted out to them. On the one hand, we know that vulnerable sections of our community must be respected while on the other hand, we demand that democratic freedoms, particularly those related to speech, are protected and respected.

From the very beginning of the process surrounding this Bill, Sinn Féin set out to strike the right balance between all these needs and the need to protect free speech and address the underlying causes of hatred. We submitted major amendments, to which we hope the Minister would accede. We also supported amendments from other parties to try to get this legislation right. The amendments we submitted covered items such as providing simple and clear definitions of "hate" and "gender" and the removal of disproportionate and overreaching powers that could be used to impede the fundamental right to freedom of expression or the right to protest. Other amendments we supported sought to remove highly controversial sections of the Bill, including one that creates a new offence of the possession of material that could be hateful regardless of whether a person intended to distribute it. The then Minister and now Taoiseach, Deputy Simon Harris, assured our party and others at the time that changes would be made.

By the time the Bill had moved to the Seanad, however, it was clear these concerns were not going to be addressed. It was at that point Sinn Féin called on the Government to withdraw and redraft the Bill. This call came after we had supported a motion in the Seanad to do likewise. This was to ensure that the legislation would be legally sound but would not undermine the right to free speech or the right to protest and would equally ensure that vulnerable persons and groups would be protected from those who might seek to incite violence against them.

What we have now is a situation where the Government has backed down temporarily to a limited degree. The Minister was, essentially, forced to gut the hate speech section of the Bill. She continues, however, to assert that the Government parties intend to reintroduce these aspects later, if the Government is re-elected. This is not acceptable.

What should have happened, of course, is that the amendments from Sinn Féin and other parties should have been accepted. We should have had a proper consensus in this House. This would have entailed a definition of "hate". "Hate" is currently defined as being "hatred". It is circular and I do not believe it is an acceptable way of doing legislation.

This reminds me of the suggestion from the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, regarding the term "durable relationships", which we know caused so much confusion in our society because nobody knew precisely what it meant. Now, we have the Minister, Deputy McEntee, trying to introduce a new definition of "gender", despite there being no consensus as to what this means. The definition in this Bill reads:

“gender” means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.

Most people do not understand what this means precisely.

Sinn Féin and other parties had put forward a common-sense approach. This was what was included in our amendment. It would have simply and clearly restated the long-standing definition of gender set out in the Equal Status Act 2000. Nobody from the Government has explained why there is a need for different criteria in this legislation. It points to legislators not taking their job seriously, because there is a need in legislation to provide legal and definitional certainty, while being inclusive enough to cover all cases. It again appears that the Minister would prefer to see this issue being ultimately decided by the courts.

We also called for sections 4 to 16, inclusive, to be scrapped. This is, essentially, what the Minister has declared she will now do but only temporarily. She intends to revisit this matter if she is re-elected. As previous speakers said, we must be cognisant of the reality here.

In other jurisdictions, hate speech laws have been used to remove legitimate symbols of expression. We know in some places the display of the Palestinian national flag has been banned as a result of such laws. It is important to record that Scotland enacted hate speech legislation earlier this year and during the first week alone, Scotland's police force was overwhelmed with more than 7,000 complaints. When the Minister and the Government have been responsible for decimating Garda numbers and morale and for closing Garda stations across the State, and when we are dealing with shrinking Garda numbers, it appears they want to tie up those gardaí who remain, investigating instances of people claiming they have been offended rather than carrying out core police duties and keeping our communities and streets safe.

We in Sinn Féin know what it is like to be censored and we oppose disproportionate and overreaching powers that could be used to impede the fundamental right to freedom of expression or the right to protest. We oppose the public order sections in the Bill in their entirety. The Public Order Act contains significant powers. It gives sweeping powers to the Garda, which of course it largely exercises correctly. Further powers in this respect are not necessary. Rights are fundamental and we must treat these matters with the utmost scrutiny on all Stages. Unfortunately, the Government has chosen instead to proceeded with a Frankenstein of a Bill that does not even do the things it was intended to do. That is not the way to do business. The legislation should be parked and we should await the outcome of a general election, which we know is imminent. For now, Sinn Féin will absolutely oppose this Bill.

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