HAVING sustained the bloodiest of noses in the recent crushing referendum defeats, the Government has wisely edged back from its aim of enacting new hate-speech legislation. Nothing softens the cough of political parties more than an electoral chastisement from the rank and file.
From a point of all-party enthusiasm for bringing in the hate speech measures as quickly as possible, the spectacular U-turn has seen TDs falling over each other in the stampede to put distance between themselves and another mega disaster.
The new Taoiseach, a man who prides himself on the ability to read the mind of the nation, has already decided that the long finger is the best option for hate-speech laws. Minister McEntee, an equally fervent proponent of the measure, has also seen the light.
But they are not alone. Sinn Féin, among the earliest cheerleaders of the new measures, has had a conversion. To a man and woman in Dáil Éireann, the party had voted solidly in favour; its voluble front bencher, Louise O’Reilly, told an LGBT public debate that she was ‘happy and proud’ to back the bill, adding that she hoped for its early enactment. But that was then.
Things have changed a lot over a few weeks. Fearful of incurring the wrath of the voters for a second time, even the innocuous referendum to allow Ireland to join the EU patent court has been quietly shelved. All of which again raises questions about how well, or otherwise, are our elected representatives tuned into the thinking of the people they represent. One can only conclude that there is a growing chasm between the bubble which is Leinster House and the everyday concerns of the man and woman in the street.
One-hundred-and-sixty parliamentarians (with a few notable exceptions) proved themselves to be so tin-eared as to plough ahead with referendums that were so glaringly out of tune with public opinion. Equally at sea were the 69 special advisers who, we are told, are the eyes and ears of their political masters – shrewd, astute, perceptive and supposedly blessed with the acuity to hear the grass growing.
Once bitten, twice shy, indeed, and Mr Harris can hardly be blamed for kicking the can down the road when it comes to an issue as divisive as the hate-speech legislation. In addition, that legislation is ill defined in its terminology. For example, it fails to adequately specify what is meant by ‘inciting hatred’, a flaw that has ominous shades of the ‘durable relationships’ debacle that sounded the death knell of the family referendum.
As the legislators are now coming to realise, the proposed law is so laden with imprecision as to risk punishment by the electorate for whatever party nails it to its mast.
The draft law says that it would be unlawful for someone to merely possess material that could incite hatred. Bizarrely, it places the legal onus on the holder of such material to prove that he or she did not intend to distribute the offending material. The radical TD Paul Murphy – hardly an upholder of the status quo – has warned that the legislation is in danger of creating the offence of ‘thought crime’.
Some devout Christians have even queried whether, under the legislation, possession of a Bible – a work of literature which famously minces no words in its denunciation of what it considers the depraved and the perverted – would constitute an offence.
On April Fools’ day, the Scottish government introduced its version of the hate-speech bill. In four weeks, over 7,000 reports flooded in, most of them, according to the prosecution service, entirely vacuous. The Dáil would need to think twice before going down the same road.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Tarik Cyril Amar
Rami G Khouri
Dr Ramzy Baroud
Mort Laitner
Petra Lesjak Tušek
Bradley Blankenship
visit website
