Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-26
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I agree with him. There is a serious issue facing society which will undermine the cohesion of society in terms of the level of hate out there and the level of hate that is articulated online and, worse, in terms of the actual murder of people and physical attacks, as the Deputy mentioned, on two drag queens in Cork recently, but also the murder of a person because he was from another country - I spoke to the minister from that country at the time in respect of that murder - and in terms of various other attacks. Recently, I met a group of young people who were working with my Department in respect of the child poverty programme. It was a group of teenagers, Irish citizens with different ethnic backgrounds. They spoke about the fear of going into town. In one case, a guy said to me his younger sister was chased home from school because of their ethnic background. There is a very real issue here.
I recently spoke to people involved in the Dublin city business initiative providing supports for people in different communities. A number of employers instanced to me the number very serious assaults on employees because of their ethnic background. These are not isolated cases any more. I believe it is very serious. I met the church leaders recently, all the interfaith groups, and the common issue was the fear of attack. The Indian community suffered significant harassment recently. There is fear there. This is something we did not have to deal with to this extent five years ago. It is above party politics.
I fully agree with the Deputy that the question of the algorithms is an issue. Toxicity is directed at quite a number of politicians. The Deputy was a victim of quite a bit of that when he was a Minister. The Garda does exceptional work in helping politicians and helping people to deal with such attacks. The gardaí involved are very professional and have a great sense of perspective in terms of the various types of threats and incidents that happen. It is at a level that I have never experienced in my life, in terms of the approach to the political world, and it is very serious.
As the Deputy will recall, with the hate crime Act we bought it last year, the last Government got into very choppy waters within the House politically. However, we got it through and the penalties have been substantially increased for hate crimes relating to ethnicity, sexual orientation or whatever.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:22+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-26