After a 14-year-old boy was hospitalised after he was assaulted by multiple attackers in Meath earlier this week, three arrests have since been made.

A video recording of the attack has circulated on social media which Gardaí have urged people not to share out of respect for the victim, who is a minor, and may have been targeted for his sexual orientation.

The young boy attended Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda where he received treatment for serious facial injuries. A Garda probe has been launched to determine whether or not the attack was a hate crime. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he is going to “reach out” to the family of the boy to express his support and sympathy.

Five potential assailants have been identified by Gardaí. The suspects, along with the victim, are students of Beaufort College in Navan.

The school has said they will also be taking disciplinary action against the perpetrators of the assault. The three arrestees, all of whom are minors, will be questioned by specialist gardaí qualified to interview children.

Three arrests made in the sickening assault case involving a 14-year-old boy in Navan on Monday pic.twitter.com/D6bgua05oc

— Cianan Brennan (@ciananbrennan) May 19, 2023

"I’m really appalled at what we saw happening in Navan. It seems to me that a young man was targeted, essentially because he was different and was subjected to a very violent assault," said Leo Varadker in a quote by the Irish Times.

"What’s worse still is people felt the need to video it and then put it online. It takes a particular type of person to post videos of people with the purpose of humiliating them, a particularly nasty type of individual."

Gardaí define a hate crime as a criminal offence in which it 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."

Leo Varadkar Fine Gael TD at Leinster House, Dublin on the 20th April 2010

There is currently no hate crime legislation in place. The government is set to have its new law on the issue ratified by the Seanad but it is understood that the Gardaí have logged the issue as a potential hate crime under the international McPherson test. The incident is also being investigated as an assault.

Minister for Education, Norma Foley, has urged people not to share the social media video. In the video, the young boy can be seen being struck in the face, before the group of youths surround him and continue to kick and punch him long after he falls to the ground. According to Foley, the video has been copied and shared over 5 million times across multiple social media platforms.

"It makes it very, very difficult for it to be removed when it has been forwarded on so many different times. So I suppose really what we are urging is that people would not do that, that they would not and I understand that it can happen for a variety of reasons, but we would be urging people not to share it, not to share content of that nature online," she said.

LGBTQ+ charities and organisations such as BeLonG To have issues statements on the attack.

Belong To's statement regarding Monday's assault on a school student.

If you need support at this time, please reach out to our youth workers here: https://t.co/LUzYcfKEOv

The full statement is also available on our website, here: https://t.co/DBkL1uCZM0 pic.twitter.com/AhsrV4M86H

— Belong To (@Belong_To) May 18, 2023

"Belong To is horrified about a serious assault which took place on Monday of this week and led to a student being treated in hospital. We send our thoughts to the young person injured and their loved ones, and wish them a full recovery," a statement from the group reads.

"We know from 2022 research that 76% of LGBTQ+ students feel unsafe in our post-primary schools. This is not good enough. We must prioritise the safety and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth who are seriously at risk. The rise in anti-LGBTQ+ violence we have witnessed across Ireland over the past 18 months is deeply distressing.

"We know that members of our community feel increasingly unsafe in public spaces and that Gardaí saw a 29% increase in reports of hate crimes and hate-related incidents last year," the statement continues.

"These feelings of unsafety and uncertainty stand in stark contrast with the jubilance of 2015 as we welcomed Marriage Equality. Schools across the country are doing incredible work supporting their LGBTQ+ students, but they cannot do this alone. We urgently need hate crime and hate speech legislation to be introduced to send a clear message that homophobia, biphobia and transphobia is not acceptable, and a clear roadmap from Government on how to tackle the rise in discrimination and hate targeting minority communities.

For more information, contact BeLonG To here.