Call for new legislative approach to racism

Ireland needs to update both its legislative and policy frameworks to properly tackle the problem of racism and linked problems of hate crime and should be looking to introduce policies to actively promote equality, a conference on racism has heard.

Prof Siobhan Mullally, Director of the Centre from Criminal Justice and Human Rights (CCJHR) at UCC said Ireland has fallen far behind European best practice since introducing the Prohibtion of Incitement to Hatred legislation over two decades ago.

“The Incitement to Hatred Act has proven ineffective in practice, not countering incidents of hate speech, not proving an effective deterrent,” Prof Mullally told the Racism and Hate Crimes conference.

Prof Mullally pointed out that in its recent report on Ireland, the European Commission on Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) expressed concern that official statistics do not reflect correctly the reality of the number of racially motivated offences in Ireland

Stephen O’Hare, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said since 1989 there has been on average just one conviction per annum.

“We don’t have a series of racially motivated offences like they have in the UK,” said Mr O’Hare.

Labour TD for Dublin North Central, Aodhán Ó Riordáin in said “I think direct provision centres as a policy is very troubling and anyone involved in children’s advocacy would say that what was said in terms of the Magdelene Laundries and child welfare issues, there is a correlation here, “he said.