Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 - Read OP

McEntee was on Prime Time last night and described hate as "a feeling" when asked what hate means to her and “by defining hate it will potentially make the bill unworkable”...how? Defining hate would impede the legislation and prevent them from being able to prosecute who it wants when it wants, and for what it wants. McEntee referenced a video of Kate Brennan-Harding, Radio Producer & Broadcaster at RTE, who posted a video on Twitter claiming she was verbally accosted by 3 men. Though Harding never referenced "hate", McEntee specifically used it as an example in justification of her hate crime law and made a point of referencing it. What Harding described was horrible and nasty but intimidation and harassment are already against the law. I don't know about anyone else but I experienced this with both sexes of different sexual preferences. I do however find it convenient that this alleged incident happened to an RTE Radio Producer & Broadcaster the day before McEntee appeared on RTEs Primetime. Of course, this is based on conjecture and all we have is Harding's word (or perception), but people are taking a video at face value from a person stating something happened without proof and has been exploited by the MOJ to push this disastrous bill. I am skeptical, to say the least.

A Dr Seamus Taylor was saying how the negative responses to the gov's public consultation were orchestrated and that many came from outside the country, and that the far-right prompted the responses. He was allowed to make such claims without any evidence and received no pushback what so ever. "the far right".......

When the media Minister Catherine Martin was praising RTE that same day for 'combatting misinformation'.....

You cant help but wonder....

Thanks for that insightful post, please feel free to keep reading the Irish Time and The Journal and believe the government approved news sources.

Gript are the only ones who make Leo and the boys squirm when they get a question from Ben, shame the rest of the so called media don't do the same.

Just googled a few Irish publications and the Press Council. Looks like most Irish newspapers have provided misleading and false messaging at one point or another. Weren't RTE sued for it multiple times too? Sean Gallagher springs to mind, along with FR Kevin Reynolds.

Two articles in the Business Post yesterday one is satire and the other states how the majority of us think

spot on!

Sinn Fein pretending they opposed the bill is pathetic. At the Committee Stage, they wanted “migration status” as one of the protected characteristics added to the 4th amendment. Simon Harris called for migration status to be protected too under the legislation. They suggested that if any of us has the nerve to “reference to persons seeking international, protection, persons with refugee status, persons with permission to remain and persons with either regular or irregular migrant status.”...be liable for prosecution... Imagine being imprisoned for saying that those who entered the country illegally or who are in the country should be deported. Clown world.

Leave Sinn Fein alone, Mary Lou had surgery lmao

A trans activist who has been convicted of attempted murder has been arrested by the Met Police on suspicion of incitement to violence after telling a cheering crowd at a Trans Pride event: "If you see a TERF, punch them in the f***ing face".

Officials fear it will be tough to police new Government legislation without an increase in resources, including new laws covering hate speech and hate crimes due to take effect in autumn...

I guess we're thinking of different people because the ones I'm thinking of won't have special characteristics. What an absolute tool. Honestly.

A frontline Garda representative, Mark Ferris, said yesterday the legislation appears to create an opaque legal climate where offenses will be a matter of subjective interpretation, each one requiring a laborious and time-consuming investigation.

In an article for the Garda Representative Association Journal, he said gardaí resignations are now running at record levels with members under “more or less constant attack from criminals who seem to have no fear of the law” and that those on the frontline fear a 'perfect storm' over the staffing crisis.

This is just a confirmation of our initial concerns about being able to police it when resources are spread thin. The Gardai Diversity Unit has 481 officers currently and the Divisional Drug Unit has 332 officers nationally....priorities

Probably be a good bit of time wasted when this comes in as the different sides engage in tit-for-tat reporting to see who's indignation and offence is more worthy of investigation.

During my time, I had to investigate a he-said-she-said "crime". The main source of evidence were text messages between 2 people. I had 14,000 text messages to read. Over 800 A4 pages. It took 18 months (because, you know, I couldn't just do that, still had the everyday stuff and other files to do). The end result? Didn't even make it to court. This new legislation will make this far more common. I feel for the current Gardai, and I can see far more leaving in the coming years. It will lead to an "accelerated" recruitment again, dropping standard for applicants and putting current and new members in danger due to this, along with reduced training time, no ongoing training, increased workload, increased anger and bitterness from the public, no support from management, outdated or cheap PPE, bog basic "patrol cars"... they'd want to up that salary to stupid levels to get me to reapply. I can't see many going for it at the current rate. A complete sh!tshow.

And if that Diversity numbers vs drugs unit number is true... wow. Just wow.

Yes, I was in the job, but it was becoming rediculous so I left (one of many reasons). It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there was a specific diversity unit doing diversity things. Not in the slightest. I know that the drugs units used to get regular members for a few months to bulk up their numbers, and where I was there were maybe 8 full time drugs unit members for an entire large and busy division, so I do believe the drugs unit number. I also saw some of these diversity officers before I left, and while the theory that they do it on top of their normal job is true, that's rarely the case as they get busier and busier and suddenly that's all they're doing. It's more work on top of more work.

You obviously are/were not in the job, because you wouldn't use phrases such as "all the rubbish calls". Not all of them are rubbish, but even the rubbish ones have to be attended and dealt with. And now this on top of it.

The only way I can see this legislation being used correctly is if there's a specific team/unit to deal with such complaints. Otherwise, leaving up to the frontline Gardai, it won't work or be used correctly. And as we know, we don't have enough Gardai at the moment so creating a new unit will take away from the other units, leaving somewhere else shorter than they already were.

But, you don't need to listen to me. You have the official Garda bodies (GRA/AGSI, the rest don't care about the members on the ground) saying the same thing.

PM some posters on here will go out to bat for the Bould Helen, (she's a female minister for justice don't you know) no matter what and won't listen to little things like facts, or your views. But funnily enough they lap up the "lived experience" of those that mesh perfectly with their views. So I wouldn't waste my time trying to persuade them, but just remember that you're talking to the majority that reads posts like this.

And on diversity officer numbers, a quick google search shows currently there are 481 according to garda.ie. https://garda.ie/en/crime-prevention/community-engagement/community-engagement-offices/garda-national-diversity-unit/garda-diversity-officers-feb-23.pdf

I don't know about the number of drugs officers, but I'm sure you're in more of a position to know more about that than other posters on here.

Nothing against PM, but the fcuking irony of this statement in the overall context of what you’ve written:

But funnily enough they lap up the "lived experience" of those that mesh perfectly with their views.

It’s well-known that AGS are under immense pressures, nobody needed any insider knowledge to know that much for themselves. Mainstream media are having a field day with the amount of stories they have been publishing about AGS for the last number of years, both good and bad, but having to deal with complaints under this legislation won’t cause them any greater distress than there has been already without the legislation in place.

They still needed to deal with thousands of complaints, and they do, but this legislation doesn’t mean that they won’t still be dealing with other complaints that they’ve always dealt with either. This particular piece of legislation is only the beginning, there’s more to come with an even greater focus on community policing, because people want Gardaí to be more visible in their communities, which cuts down on all sorts of criminal activities and antisocial behaviour:

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/fde96-landmark-policing-security-and-community-safety-bill-2023-begins-its-legislative-journey/