Ireland’s Department of Justice is finalizing a new hate crime and hate speech law that will make it easier to secure prosecutions and convictions for crimes allegedly motivated by or judged to cause hate. Material that is sent or distributed (e.g., retweeted) and judged to be hateful will be dealt with under this law.
A harassment charge, for example, can be upgraded to a hate crime if it was directed at a protected class of person (e.g., transsexuals) or if it can be shown that there were accompanying “hostile or prejudiced slurs, gestures, other symbols or graffiti at the time of offending.”
The Irish Department of Justice (IDOJ) admitted that this change is intended to rectify past difficulties establishing “motivation alone in proving hate crime offences.”
Critics have suggested that this would constitute a shift in the burden of proof from those levying accusations of hatred to those who were accused.