Irish Examiner View: Tougher laws on hate speech

Socially-distanced protesters take a knee outside the US Embassy in London, as part of an anti-racism demonstration coinciding with the start of the trial of the four police officers charged with the murder of George Floyd in the US.

The Black Lives Matter protests are an entirely justifiable response to the institutionalised, institutionally protected, and endorsed racism that has bedevilled America since that country's inception. 

That dysfunction, no matter how ugly, does not justify the destruction and violence that some of those protests have led to.  Indeed, the violence and looting undermine the BLM cause more profoundly than anything its opponents can muster.

The same issues are in play in this country although, thankfully, less dramatically. There is racism in Ireland, there are victims of hate speech and racial profiling too. 

Those issues are of such concern that Government has received almost 4,000 submissions in a consultation process on renewing hate crime laws. Apart at all from the immediate issue, this is a good example of participatory democracy. 

Gardaí have, for some time, pointed to the difficulties in securing a conviction under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act. Those concerns, among others, were recognised in the programme for Government which promised, within 12 months, legislation to try and deal with hate crime and hate speech. 

As part of that process, the Department of Justice is expected to publish in the coming weeks research conducted on legal approaches taken in other countries to tackle this growing, toxic problem.

It is probably too idealistic and innocent to suggest that though legislation is needed to protect the vulnerable in this area, it is an indictment of this society that it is needed at all.