Taoiseach Simon Harris would be “insane” to bring the hate speech bill back onto the agenda after the summer recess, a Senator has claimed.
In an exclusive interview with Gript this week, Independent Senator Gerard Craughwell was asked about the potential return of the government’s controversial hate speech bill, and whether he thought it was likely.
Over the weekend, an article in the Irish Mail on Sunday claimed that, according to an unnamed senior government Minister, there is little enthusiasm within the Cabinet to advance the bill before the upcoming election.
“That hate speech Bill has run into the sand, and it won’t be coming out of the sand before the general election,” the Minister reportedly stated, adding: “That Bill has no friends in the market, I’m afraid. It was ill-conceived and we will let it die off.”
However, just a few days later, Taoiseach Simon Harris insisted that the Bill would, in fact, be passed within the lifetime of the current government.
Asked if he felt the legislation would proceed, Craughwell said the Taoiseach only voiced support for the Bill because “he has to say something like that.”
“The truth of the matter is, anybody who would bring forward this Bill now coming up into a general election would want to be insane,” he said, adding: “It is the most ridiculous piece of legislation to come before the Seanad in my time.”
“You have a Bill on ‘hate’, and you don’t define what ‘hate’ is. So we’re going to finish up in the same situation that they’re in in Scotland, with hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of calls in the first few days, claiming that ‘I have been the victim of hate speech’.”
Craughwell compared warnings around the hate speech bill to the warnings that Independent Senators and TDs had given the government about the disastrously defeated Family and Care referendums – warnings which went unheeded.
“We told them when they recalled the senators on the Monday and told us we had to pass the legislation for the referendum by Tuesday afternoon. Michael McDowell, myself, Rónán Mullen, Sharon Keogan, and several members of the House said, ‘Please, do not do this. Nobody wants this. It is a waste of time. You’re not going to win.’
“…I wrote in the Mail On Sunday this weekend to Simon Harris, and I said, ‘Please listen this time – nobody wants this nonsense.’ It’s a load of bloody rubbish. Put it away, let it wither on the vine. Go and have your election. If you try to force this bill through – and they’re doing this quite a lot lately, they bring it in and they guillotine it after a couple of hours and it passes – if they do that, they’re going to pay a high price at the ballot box.”
Craughwell added that “all of the political parties seem to be supportive” of the hate speech bill.
“But it’s a nonsense bill,” he said.
“Define hate for us. Please, tell me what hate is, and I’ll try not to say it. But if you can’t tell me what it is, take the bill, do the smart thing, and put it in the bin. Walk away. Pretend you never heard of it.”
Asked if other legislators felt the same way as him on this issue, Craughwell said that “all of the independents find this repugnant – a load of nonsense, really.”
“I know that members of political parties are extremely concerned about the damage it would do to their electoral prospects if they push this bill through,” he said.
“So my hope is that sense will prevail, and it’ll go away. And if we have to deal with this legislation, then let’s define it. Let people know exactly what is involved here. And then we know what we can and can’t say.”