I thank the Minister for coming in to take this issue. It is important, particularly in this week of Pride, that we acknowledge there are still issues concerning the LGBT community and the confidence it might have in the prosecution of offences or the following up of allegations related to events that clearly have a hate motivation to them. In June 2024, when I was a Senator, I raised an issue in the Seanad about two young men who were pursued through Phoenix Park with hammers and knives and who were very frightened, for understandable reasons, by an attack during which there were repeated shouts of homophobic slurs at them. I do not want to or expect the Minister to go into the details of that case because I do not know the status of the prosecution. People were brought before the courts in relation to the matter, and that is a matter for the courts. The point I wanted to make was that I raised that issue. I give credit to the gardaí involved for acting swiftly. Somebody was apprehended, and that will follow due course. The point I am making is that in Ireland of 2024, or indeed Ireland of 2026, the kind of thing I have described is still happening. In 2024, there was still hate crime, hate speech or incitement to hatred legislation before these Houses that was due to become law. It was essentially watered down before it did and it has been abandoned. There are those people who think it is acceptable to behave in a way that threatens and frightens members of a particular community, not for any good reason but simply because they are members of that community, and they think they can do that with impunity. Of course, we have incitement to hatred legislation dating back to the early 1990s, which we know is largely ineffective because there has only been a sum total of about 50 prosecutions under it. Of course it is an offence to intimidate somebody anyway. It is an offence to threaten somebody. There were ancillary offences in that prosecution that were not necessarily based on the hate crime element of it. My understanding is that very often in these cases, when people are brought before the Garda for interview or brought before the courts to account for what they have done, they will say their action was not hate motivated and was not because the victims were members of the LGBT community, for example. My concern is that the law is not equipped to address the hate element properly. Listening to members of the LGBT community, I have noted that they are concerned that gardaí are either ill-equipped or unable to deal with these matters in a way that satisfies them that they are safe. I know the Minister will agree that this is something we have to remedy. We cannot have a situation where ordinary, law-abiding, decent people are being persecuted by a tiny section of society that has some misguided belief that it should or can pursue these people, as I say, not for any good reason but simply because of who they are and, in this instance, because of their sexual orientation. It cannot be allowed to continue. It must be stopped. The reason I am raising this issue with the Minister is not just because this is Pride Week, although it is and so it is appropriate. I would really like him to set out the steps his Department is putting in place to give confidence to the LGBT community, and to show them in a concrete manner that we are serious as a body politic about tackling this issue and sending out a message to anybody who thinks he or she can behave this way that it will not be tolerated, that there will be prosecutions, that there will be serious consequences from the courts, and that the Minister is satisfied that An Garda Síochána and the criminal court system have everything they need to prosecute these offences, hold people to account and mete out the appropriate punishments that will be effective in stopping this kind of behaviour.

Sentiment score: -0.16

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.

Sentiment score: -0.14