Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. The Bill has been discussed. I may have misspoken in respect of Committee Stage. The Bill has been discussed extensively in this House. It has been discussed at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice as well. There is no lack of discussion on this subject. Senator Mullen and I have shared platforms in respect of this on a number of occasions. We have been in the media on this on a vast number of occasions - far too many, some might say. There is no lack of discussion on this Bill. The Bill has been scheduled for four and a half hours of discussion today. We have now spent 35 minutes of those four and a half hours listening to Senator Mullen telling us about the issues that have to be talked through properly. The Senator should understand that talking through issues does not mean a monologue from one Senator with one perspective.

This is a debate where amendments have been tabled. Each amendment should be discussed and debated with regard to the amendments themselves. What we actually heard from the Senator was an extensive Second Stage speech in which he set out all the issues he has with this Bill, including aspects of the Bill that the Minister is withdrawing from the House. If that is not a waste of some of the time that this House has, then I do not know what is.

I will not spend a lot of time talking about this but I want to address a couple of issues raised by Senator Mullen. He expressed a view that the difference between an offence committed against a child because somebody hates their parent and an offence committed against a child because of the ethnicity or race of that child is naught . That is to fundamentally misunderstand the effect on a person of an offence that is motivated by hatred because of, for example, ethnicity or race. There is ample academic literature to back this up but it is perfectly commonsense that when somebody is targeted because of who they are in terms of their being, not what they have chosen to be, it has a deep effect on them. If a child, for example, who is not Irish and maybe is ethnically different is assaulted on the street, let us say, the message that child takes is that they are not welcome, that they are different, that they are othered and that they are not safe or welcome in this community. That has a deep-seated psychological impact on that child. That is something that is recognised in the courts as an aggravating factor at sentence. It is widely recognised in our criminal courts. In fact, I have never heard that fact being disputed before. The notion that somebody-----