Minister for Justice Helen McEntee is planning to strengthen laws against hate crimes and hate speech, in particular focusing on securing convictions in the courts.

The upcoming measures will be announced today (July 13) ahead of legislation heading to the Oireachtas in the autumn. Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, the Minister remarked that she intends to amend her approach to the Incitement to Hatred and Hate Crime Bill.

Hate crime has two important elements: criminal act and bias motive, according to the Irish Network Against Racism.

On the 9th October 2019, An Garda Síochána introduced a working definition for hate crime and hate incident.

A hate crime is "any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to, in whole or in part, be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, ‘race’, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender."

A hate incident is described as "any non-crime incident which is perceived by any person to, in whole or in part, be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender."

McEntee aims to create new aggravated versions of existing offences with the updated laws, where those offences are motivated by prejudice against what is termed a "protected characteristic" of the victim.

These include race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, gender and disability. It remains to be seen how difficult it will be to prove that the perpetrator was motivated by prejudice, and whether marginalised communities will be targeted by hate speech laws themselves.

Minister McEntee said she hopes the bill will be enacted by the end of 2022 and that the legislation will cover all forms of media - including online, print and radio.

'We have responded to the needs that people have, that's not saying it's enough, I'm not sure it will ever be enough because of the challenges that we are facing,' Minister Helen McEntee said https://t.co/BJi8NBV0E2 pic.twitter.com/deaR9q7djm

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) July 13, 2022

The last law to deal with the subject was introduced in 1989 and there have been just 50 convictions under the Incitement to Hatred law. Convictions under the new bill would carry tougher sentences, the Justice Minister stated.

"There are people living in this country at this moment in time who are not living their lives as they should simply because of fear," the minister said. "We all have a right to feel safe and to be safe. For somebody to feel unsafe simply because of who they are - their race, their religion, the colour of their skin, their sexual orientation - it's not a society that I want to live in, and it's not what we should be tolerating."

Aggravated offences would generally carry an enhanced penalty, compared to the ordinary offence. Any conviction for such an offence would clearly state that the offence was motivated by hatred - that it was a hate crime.

'We need a law that has teeth, that you can prosecute but we also need a law around hate crimes,' Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said as legislation to tackle hate speech and hate crime is planned for the autumn | Read more: https://t.co/cxJ6FZVgRM pic.twitter.com/SCEG6S8J0t

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) July 13, 2022

In April 2010, Black 15-year-old Toyosi Shittabey was murdered in a knife attack in Tyrrelstown, West Dublin. The attack followed an exchange in which his assailant shouted racial abuse, but no one has been convicted in connection with Toyosi’s murder.

In May 2013, Vietnamese Irish blogger Úna-Minh Kavanagh was attacked by a group of youths assaulted and spat at, with racial abuse hurled at her.

In February 2013, a house assigned to a Traveller family in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, was destroyed in an arson attack. The attack came a short time after local Councillor Sean McEniff objected to the house being built and made comments on local radio arguing that Travellers should be kept away from the settled community and isolated.

On St Patrick’s day 2014, Adam Labazanov, whose family are refugees from Chechnya, was kidnapped at a fake Garda checkpoint and driven 2 miles. The 19-year-old was stripped naked and stabbed 57 times by his assailants after they discovered he was Muslim. They buried him in sand and leaves before leaving him for dead. No one has been brought to justice for these crimes.

Just this year, Aidan Moffitt (42) and Michael Snee (58) were found murdered in their own homes in Sligo, Ireland, in the space of 24 hours. The brutal killings were presumed to be fuelled by homophobia.

As part of the Coalition Against Hate Crime, LGBT Ireland participated in the important Love Not Hate Campaign outside Leinster house last week. A petition calling for effective hate crime legislation was submitted to the Minister of Justice pic.twitter.com/EmEj9vrF5Z

— LGBT Ireland (@LGBT_ie) February 14, 2022

For more information, visit inar.ie/hate-crime-legislation/.