Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-13
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I join with the Deputy in condemning those racists attacks on the Dublin Rose who has been selected. It is absolutely appalling and there should be no tolerance of such racist abuse of any person in Ireland, or anywhere for that matter. Again, all of us in the House need to reflect on this. I recall in the last Dáil that there was legislation on hate speech, which eventually ran into a roadblock politically because others suggested that it undermined free speech and so on. To be honest, the Dáil collectively shied away from some aspects of that. We did bring in the additional penalties for criminal convictions and so on. At least it was done in terms of assaults and that. However, there is a huge issue, and the Deputy is correct in terms of the monetisation of this. I am reading some stuff on the by-election in Dublin Central that is quite appalling. Stuff just appears online irrespective of the candidate, and it is just appalling that this kind of stuff can happen. We need to collectively address it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-13