Crime Prevention
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-25
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Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire

I thank the Minister and appreciate the acknowledgment that this behaviour is ongoing. It is important to say clearly that there is a problem. I also appreciate what the Minister said about the legislation that was passed and commenced in 2024. However, I am not convinced that it is sufficient. What it does is to give greater discretion to a judge to consider a particular hate element to be an aggravating factor. There is certainly a part of me that would have thought it should not have been necessary to put that into law. I do not know, for example, what training is being provided to judges to deal with hate aspects of crimes that come before them for sentence.
My big problem is that we had much stronger hate legislation with the Bill that was before these Houses. It was watered down in amendments on subsequent Stages. There is not really the provision of a hate crime. It is probably unfair to ask the Minister on the hoof the number of prosecutions that involved an increased tariff on sentence because of a hate element. I do not know if the Minister would have those figures to hand. However, that is a matter we should be looking at because if it is the case that it is a very small number, that is a demonstration that legislation that is now on the Statute Book and has been operational for 18 months is not being effectively used to tackle these things. Of course, we have to give it time but an analysis after 18 months gives us a reasonable assessment of whether the legislation is being used.
I also acknowledge what the Minister said about disregard scheme. I absolutely agree with that, and it is overdue, but it is not relevant to this discussion. Of course we send out the message to people but the real issue in this Topical Issue I am raising with the Minister is that a lot of people who are members of the LGBT community either do not feel safe or feel that when something happens to them, which is demonstrably motivated by hate, there is not an adequate response from the system. That is something we have to tackle because if we fail to do so, it creates a much greater problem.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-25