Green Party top brass stress value of 'debate and discussion' despite backing Ireland's hate speech law

Roderick O’Gorman made the comments amid a rise in anti-immigration protests across the Republic, with a group of demonstrators gathering outside his home in the last couple of days with signs and banners opposing more migrants.

Meanwhile a makeshift migrant camp has also been set up in central Dublin, sparking protests.

Mr O’Gorman is Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth.

He was speaking at a party conference in Dublin’s RDS on Saturday.

The Irish Green Party is the sister outfit of the Northern Irish Green Party.

“Our party is rooted in debate, discussion, and in consensus,” said Mr O’Gorman.

"But in Ireland and abroad increasingly there’s a drive towards division and hatred, assuming the worst about everyone at all times.

“We see the abuse the misinformation and disinformation on social media having a real impact on our communities and on the most vulnerable in society.

“We’ve seen what happens in other countries when this takes hold, when the centre ground cedes the argument to the extremists.”

The Green Party has been among those to back a new law criminalising people’s speech and online activity if it feeds into “hatred”.

This law has been strongly criticised by free speech advocates both domestically and internationally, and amid this outcry Sinn Fein recently dropped their support for it:

• Sinn Fein perform full u-turn on Republic of Ireland's new 'thought crime' law having previously voted 100% in favour of it

There is already a “hate speech” law on the Irish statute books: The Prohibition of Incitement To Hatred Act 1989.

It makes it an offence to publish words, images, or sounds that “are threatening, abusive or insulting and are intended or, having regard to all the circumstances, are likely to stir up hatred”.

Breaking this existing law can incur a fine of £10,000 and two years in jail.

The existing law contains a strict get-out clause though: it will not be a crime if the “offender” can show they were “inside a private residence” at the time and had “no reason to believe” anyone outside could see or hear the material.

The new bill has no reference to private residences.

Another big difference is that the new bill seeks to include self-declared gender identity as a protected characteristic, potentially impacting how people discuss transgenderism.

The new proposed law is officially called “The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022”.

The current version (which the Dail approved by a landslide last April) seeks “the prohibition of incitement to violence or hatred against a person, or a group of persons, on account of certain characteristics".

The bill says that if anyone "communicates material”, and is “reckless” about whether that material will “incite hatred”, they can be sent to jail for five years.

If someone is convicted of "condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace" in a way that “intends” to “incite hatred”, they can be jailed for one year.

And if someone merely "possesses material” which is “not for personal use”, and that material is “likely to incite hatred”, they can be jailed for two years.

(Actually, the wording of the bill goes beyond that, and includes any data held on a server in Ireland, regardless of where in the world the data-user is).