Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Very briefly on this again, I will refer back to what exactly we are trying to achieve here. The amendments we are speaking to are technical in nature and remove quite a significant part of this legislation. I genuinely regret that this is where we are at now. For a lot of legislation, you will not always reach a consensus but for the most part, you need to have a consensus and that was not there in this instance. I accept that. The next Dáil and the next Seanad, whenever they come into being, will need to find a way forward because the 1989 Act needs to be updated. We can see that clearly, particularly in the changes we are experiencing in our society at the moment and the fact that a greater level of hatred is being displayed and communicated in every type of platform. I fundamentally believe we need to update our 1989 Act. I regret we are not doing it here now but I also fundamentally believe we need to have hate crime laws in place. We do not have them at the moment. We are the only country in Europe, and indeed probably the western world, that does not have hate crime legislation. I will touch on many of the points that have been raised in some of the amendments but I want to make the point that no country has hate crime legislation that defines hate. Again, we will touch on that. Many people in this House have suggested that we are doing something weird, wacky or different from everybody else by defining it in the way that is being proposed, that we will be completely out of kilter and that it will render this Bill completely unusable. I will get into that again but we are not going off kilter here. We are looking at what other countries have done in making sure we get this right.

With regard to the characteristics, the reason we chose these specific characteristics is based on consultation and facts, including the fact that there are people who are more likely to be targeted and are already victims of crime simply because of who they are. I am not aware of a significant number of children who are being attacked because their parents or others are politicians. What I do know, however, is that if you are under the age of 25 and you are transgender, you are significantly more likely to be a victim of a crime or to be attacked than any other younger person. That is a fact. It is based on fact, and not just reports that have been done but you only have to look at reports from An Garda Síochána. I will outline a few, and continue to outline these throughout the evening. On 29 June 2004 in Dublin, a female was on the way to a market with two friends and was physically attacked by a man. He threw his body at her with all of his strength. She asked him what was happening, and he began insulting her saying that she was "nothing more than a trans". He repeated several times that she was nothing more than a man. On 8 August 2023, a transgender person was with a group of friends when three to five individuals began intimidating just that person, not the others. They attempted to evade these individuals. They were pursued, punched three times to the face and pushed to the ground. Their runners and hoodies were taken. Third, on 27 April last year in the north west, a transgender person was walking from a shop and was followed out of the shop by an individual who punched them in the back of the head simply because they were transgender. These are real people, real Garda reports and real issues. They are not made up or airy-fairy.