Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is not what the Bill is about. It does not outlaw giving offence or taking offence. After this legislation passes, even without the hate speech elements of it, it will still be permissible to say things that are offensive. It was never going to be any other way, but Senator Mullen repeatedly suggests that in an attempt to include in his army of misinformation things that are simply not in the Bill. I absolutely reject that.

It is important that we talk about these issues but, most important, when we pass this Bill, that we set down a rule for a case when someone is about to target a group that is vulnerable. It is not about majority groups, equality before the law, or saying all crimes are the same, because none of those things applies in regard to this Bill; it is about saying what will happen if you want to commit a crime against somebody and you target that person because of their ethnicity, religious belief, sexuality or gender. We can talk about what gender means if you want, but gender is actually a grammatical construct – sex is the word we should use if you want to go down that road. Everybody understands what-----