Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On a more serious note, the Senator will be glad to hear that the issue of human rights abuses in China has been raised on a number of occasions at meetings of the Joint Committee of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence, of which I am a member. We hope to have a meeting on such abuses in the new year. Clearly, the dreadful crackdown on the democracy protests in Hong Kong has been a issue of concern for all of us. There are Irish students in Hong Kong on exchange programmes who have been affected by this. I support the Senator raising this concern.

Finally, I ask the Leader for a debate on hate speech. Yesterday, at a meeting of the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination in Geneva, the deputy Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality is reported to have said that given the recent raising of concerns about speech by different candidates in the by-elections, this State needs to do more on hate speech. We must bring forward legislation to ensure that we have adequate legislation in place to ensure hate speech is adequately tackled in our laws, which is long overdue. The University of Limerick has done a great deal of work on the matter, as well as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and others. We need to frame the legislation sensitively and clearly to ensure that it is not an undue restriction on freedom of expression.