Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, is very welcome back again in the Seanad. Social media has fuelled hatred but it has also put on display for all of us the dirty, filthy, underbelly of hatred in Irish society. That hatred has always existed. It may be fuelled by social media but what is the excuse when it comes to the way that Travellers have been treated across hundreds of years in this country? What is the excuse when it comes to the way people with disabilities have been treated in this country, especially those with intellectual disabilities? I could go on to speak about gender. However, before I got up to speak today I was shocked at some really quite outrageous outraged expressions from people about the use of a word from a previous speaker. Yet, they think nothing of making comments about other people's identities and particularly their gender or sexual identities. I believe that this says it all.

When one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good. Throughout our Constitution one can see that while one has rights they are restricted for the common good. Everything needs to be balanced. If a person's views on other people's identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good. One cannot do and say whatever one likes in our society, which is a society governed by laws. This is very fundamental to a legislative system. It should be one of the very fundamentals for any legislators who sit in this Chamber that they understand what we do is restrict freedoms.

I will talk about gender. As education spokesperson for the Green Party I am surrounded by a lot of young people a lot of the time. I also have my own young people. They are absolutely shocked that we are even having any kind of conversation about what other people's gender is. They just do not understand it. They ask "What are you talking about?" and suggest that what people think of themselves is their own business. They ask what it has to do with anybody else and why people should come and attack them for it. There are people who, down through generations, have been fearful about walking outside their door because they are attacked verbally. That restricts their freedoms. Why do some people believe their freedoms cannot be restricted but others can? It sounds to me a lot like bullying.

When the Green Party went into the programme for Government negotiations, hate legislation was very much on the agenda for us. In the Minister's speech, she said that we are introducing hate crime legislation for the first time in order to ensure that those who target victims because of their association with a particular identity characteristic are identified as perpetrators of hate crime. This is what is in the programme for Government for the first time. Yes we have had hate crime legislation but it dared not even bear the name because it has been totally ineffective. The previous speaker, Senator Flynn, is correct in that we cannot legislate for kindness, but as public representatives we represent the public in these Chambers, and we can at least say that the public does not accept this kind of behaviour anymore and that this is a step in the right direction.

I am aware that there are various views on particular parts of the legislation. Let us discuss that on Committee Stage and let us have a proper discussion about it. This Chamber is the best place in which to have those conversations about the minutiae of the legislation. There has been an awful lot of distraction from some of the previous speakers. There has been an awful lot of distraction but this fundamentally comes down to only one thing - whether we can move forward towards a kinder society. Within the fairly blunt instrument of legislation, can we do that in this Chamber? I believe we can and this Bill is an excellent step in that direction.