Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That seems to be changing all the time.

I ask the Leader for a debate in the autumn on hate crime legislation. I was present at the launch of a report yesterday by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties together with University of Limerick academics who have drawn up draft legislation on hate crimes. They propose the introduction of aggravated offences against the person and an aggravated offence of criminal damage where the motivation for an offence was bias against a person on the basis of ethnicity, gender or sexuality.A range of non-governmental organisations including the Gay + Lesbian Equality Network, GLEN, the Immigrant Council of Ireland and others have worked with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, on this legislation. It is impressive. The Minister of State, Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, and I attended the launch and we will be looking to work on it to see if we can introduce some form of legislation on this area in the autumn. We heard powerful testimony about the experiences of individuals who have been targeted because of their ethnicity, sexuality, they are transgender or for other reasons and subjected to hate crimes in Ireland in recent years. It is appalling that there is no legislation dealing specifically with that but also no systematic means of recording these offences. An Garda Síochána has some policies but they are inadequate at this stage. Given there is no legislation, it is particularly difficult for the Garda to record these instances specifically as hate crimes. I ask the Leader for that debate.

I thank all colleagues who contributed in the debate last Thursday afternoon on the Employment Equality (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, which, following enactment, will be renamed the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. It was a good day for the Seanad. It started life as a Private Members' Bill in the Seanad introduced by myself and the Labour Senators and it was great to see it getting Government approval, moving forward and concluding Report Stage on Thursday afternoon in the Seanad. We had a good array of people in the Gallery who had a strong interest in the Bill, which will now come before the Dáil. I am sure we all look forward to it becoming law and finally removing the possibility of discrimination under section 37.