Specific offences should be urgently introduced to criminalise the motivations of people who carry out hate crimes, according to a new study.

The transgender community has called on the Government to introduce hate-crime legislation.

A conference on hate crime yesterday heard that the absence of legislation had created "permission to hate" and that hate-motivated crimes should attract harsher penalties.

Fears that allowing suicide as grounds for an abortion would “open the floodgates” are completely unfounded, TDs and senators were told yesterday.

A constitutional amendment is not needed to allow for the abortion of a foetus that has no chance of survival outside the womb, legal experts have argued.

Twenty years on from the X case, the Government must act to bring certainty to abortion law, writes Jennifer Schweppe

LAW lecturer Jennifer Schweppe (April 22) claimed members of the Oireachtas have “abjectly failed in their constitutional duty” by not introducing legislation to make abortion available in Ireland.

AN expert on abortion law has said it is an “appalling situation” when three women have to ask the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to resolve the “abortion question” because the Dáil has refused to.

IRELAND’S criminal law is not equipped to deal with racially motivated crime, it has been suggested.