Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-30
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Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

Obviously, in order for anything to reach the threshold of terrorist activity, it has to come within the definition of what is terrorist activity. That is set out in section 2 of the Bill, which talks about if it is committed. Let us look at Part 1 of Schedule 2. The Senator highlighted criminal damage. We can see that the rest of the Schedule is focusing on very serious criminal offences and as regards criminal damage, which is what we are talking about, it is clearly considering issues such as arson and where property is seriously damaged. This is not going to happen on foot of minor offences or in terms of non-indictable offences. Even if it did, there are the other three requirements, one of which must be met. These are, first, seriously intimidating a population; second, unduly compelling a government or an international organisation to perform or abstain from performing and act, and it is not credible to suggest that graffiti on a wall suggesting that Israel should get out of the occupied territory is unduly compelling a government to perform an act; and, third, seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political constitution, economic or social structures of a state or an international organisation. We can see that the threshold in order for a criminal offence to be elevated into terrorist activity is particularly high, taking into account the definition set out there. I do not envisage any of the issues the Senator referred to. Whereby somebody putting graffiti on a wall, which is technically criminal damage, I do not envisage that person being prosecuted because the sign on the wall says that they want Israel to move out of the occupied territories. That is not going to happen. We need to live in the real world when it comes to the interpretation of this legislation. We have had 20 years of it being interpreted and applied in a very limiting way. There is no reason to think that this interpretation is going to change in the future, and particularly since, to use the Senator's example, criminal damage has been a scheduled offence in the legislation for many years.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-30