Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, what the Senator disputed is that there is no difference between, let us say, a child born in Africa who is ethnically African and comes to this country and is assaulted in the course of a hate crime, called names, othered and essentially told they are not welcome, and a child who is assaulted because somebody does not like that child's father. There is a fundamental difference between those two things. It is so fundamental that this House and the other House have spent a great deal of time passing an extensive piece of legislation to recognise the fact that that offence is markedly different in character, and perhaps most importantly, in the effect that it has on the victim of that crime. I have never heard anybody in the law courts or in these Houses actually dispute that fact, other than Senator Mullen when he stood up today and essentially said the same thing.

He talked about the fact that there is a tiering of victimhood. I have news for Senator Mullen: every single crime is different, every offender is different and every victim is different. The effect on every one of them is different, so of course there are tiers. If, for example, a person is a victim of domestic violence and assault at home by a partner, that is completely different from somebody who is randomly assaulted on the street by a person coming out of a pub. They are different. The Senator can call them tiers or differences, but it is entirely appropriate that the law would recognise that one is more serious than the other because it has a more profound effect on the victim. That is the reality of the criminal law and the way the courts approach it. The reality of what we are doing in this law is trying to recognise the fact that crimes do have different effects on people, which is something that must be taken into consideration.

By the way, we already do this in law. We recognise the fact that, for example, murder of an individual is different from capital murder of a garda in the course of his or her duty. We have already put through legislation in this House to recognise the difference between assault on an individual and assault on an ambulance crew who are trying to help somebody or a fire crew who are trying to stop a fire from burning down a home. These are different crimes and they deserve different recognition in law.It most certainly does not affect the doctrine that everybody is equal in the eyes of the law. That is not what this is about. It is exactly this kind of mischaracterisation that has polluted the well-founded concepts behind this Bill. It is the muddying of the waters by Senator Mullen and others in this House, who have suggested that there is somehow a nefarious ideological agenda here - that is not here - but instead it has caused people to lose faith in aspects of the Bill and resulted in us having to come back here.