Hate crime latest: Northern Ireland's polticians 'need to pay close attention to what is happening with Dublin bill'

The comments were made by Simon Calvert, deputy director of the Christian Institute, who was reacting to the decision by the Dublin government to partly abandon its planned new law after significant opposition from outside the political sphere.

The bill had been supported by every major party in the Irish parliament, and was opposed by only a handful of independents – up until Sinn Fein did a u-turn in March, and came out against it.

That followed increasing criticism of the bill, with activists voicing concern that it could curb freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Critics included the owner of Twitter Elon Musk, as well as Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump Junior, son of the former US president.

It also came amid criticism aimed at the Scottish government over its planned adoption of a very similar law.

Northern Ireland’s justice minister Naomi Long is planning to bring in her own “hate crime” bill too.

Following the news that the Dublin government is scaling back its plans, Mr Calvert told the News Letter: “The entire concept of hate crime is now deeply controversial and the Northern Ireland Executive needs to be paying attention to what is happening in neighbouring jurisdictions.

"Ireland and Scotland have both been forced into humiliating climb-downs on their hate crime proposals in recent years. And even Scotland’s more limited proposals were a disaster when they first came into force earlier this year.

"This is a salutary lesson in how divisive and damaging these things can be.

"We cannot legislate in ways which brand innocent conversations as ‘hatred’ and innocent people as ‘criminals’.”

At the weekend it emerged that the Irish government plans to press ahead with the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 – but in a reduced form.

According to reports, the government will drop its idea of criminalising “incitement” offences.

Meanwhile, it will retain the bits of the bill which would increase the punishment meted out to someone if they attack a person based on certain “protected characteristics”.

These are defined in the bill as “(A) race, (b) colour, (c) nationality, (d) religion, (e) national or ethnic origin, (f) descent, (g) gender, (h) sex characteristics, (i) sexual orientation, or (j) disability”.

Importantly, this is the bill’s definition of what "gender" means: "The gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender, or with which the person identifies, and includes transgender, and a gender other than those of male and female".

The bits which the government will reportedly drop include Section 7.

This means you can get up to five years in jail if you “communicates material” or “behave in a public place” in a way that is “reckless” to whether “hatred” is incited against “a person or a group of persons” (News Letter’s emphasis).

Here is a detailed breakdown of the bill’s provisions.

This, added to the definition of "gender" above, suggests it would have become a crime to voice views that risk resulting in "hatred" towards people who are biologically male, but who want access to women's changing rooms and sports because they feel female.

Similarly, it also suggests it will be a crime to express views which could inspire "hatred" towards the "non-binary" movement (comprised of people who say they are neither male nor female, but instead belong to some new category like "two-spirit" or "gender-queer").