The number of hate-based crimes and other incidents reported to An Garda Síochána increased by 12 per cent last year, with most of the incidents linked to the victims’s ethnicity or nationality.
Three motives — race, nationality and sexuality — have been the most commonly reported in the last three years. However, nationality overtook sexual orientation to become the second most prevalent motive complained about last year.
Because data around hate-based crimes, and other hate-linked non-crime incidents, have only been published since 2021 long-term trends have yet to emerge, according to Garda sources. However, they suggested nationality-based incidents appear to have increased in frequency over the last year as immigration emerged as a bigger issue in the Republic.
Chief Supt Pádraic Jones, of Garda community engagement, said while the trend of hate-based crime was up, “in one sense it was positive that victims are coming forward and speaking with An Garda Síochána about their experience of a crime motivated by hate”. But it was “disappointing that incidents of this nature occur at all”.
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“Being targeted because of a characteristic has an enormous and often life-altering impact on a victim and as a society we must continue to reject hate and discrimination. Everyone has a right to live safely,” he said. Urging more victims to come forward, he added gardaí would “deal with it professionally and provide our support in any way we can”.
Offences, including threatening abuse and assaults, are defined as hate crimes where it is perceived a characteristic of the victim was a motivating factor for the perpetrator. Hate-based “incidents” are those where the event or slur would not meet the threshold of a criminal offence, but were still motivated by hate.
Complainants who make a report to the Garda can make that report under nine different grounds of hate, including “the victim’s age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender”.
Some 651 hate-based crime or non-crime incidents were recorded in 2023, up by 12 per cent. Of those, hate-based crimes increased by almost 8 per cent, to 548 incidents while hate-based non-crime incidents increased by 43 per cent, to 103 incidents.
Race-based hate was a factor in 36 per cent of crimes and incidents reported followed by nationality-based hate, in 18 per cent of cases, and sexual orientation in 16 per cent of cases.
The most frequent crime type, hate was a factor in public order, which accounted for 27 per cent of all hate-based cases reported to the Garda. This was followed by minor assaults (16 per cent), criminal damage not by fire (9 per cent) and criminal damage by fire (3 per cent). Dublin accounted for 44 per cent of all incidents nationally.
Releasing the data, the Garda outlined several cases in which complaints were made and resulted in prosecutions last year. This included a man walking on a Dublin street being verbally abused with homophobic slurs, resulting in a suspect being charged.
In another case, a man who racially abused staff in a post office was convicted in the District Court and received a two-month suspended sentence. In the southern region, a man who made homophobic threats while armed with a knife was convicted and sentenced to 14 days imprisonment.
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