The Government’s draconian hate-speech bill wasn’t strong enough for Sinn Fein. They wanted it expanded to give the undocumented illegals special protection under the proposed law from hate crimes. SF put forward expansive amendments in February of 2023 to include the migrant status as part of the “protected characteristics”. This included race, colour, nationality, religion, absence of religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and disability.
Any argument with anyone of any of those characteristics regardless of the reason for it would leave one open to a criminal prosecution under the act as proposed by the Sinn Fein amendments. The proposed hate speech bill would criminalise hate speech and hate crimes which could be characterised as prejudice against ‘protected characteristics’. This would create a two tier system of ‘justice’ in Ireland leaving Irish people at a massive disadvantage with under Sinn Fein’s proposals and with Sinn Fein’s blessing.
Sinn Féin who were gung-ho for the bill have suddenly done a sudden u turn now denying that its recent about face vote against the act is in fact a U-turn. That’s rich coming from SF since all of its TDs voted in favour of the legislation last April. The woke Irish political establishment which Sinn Fein are now firmly entrenched in suffered a recent massive referenda defeat which seems to have caused Sinn Fein to have a meltdown resulting in a summersault where they now want the bill to be scrapped.
The definition of “hate” doesn’t even exist in this flawed piece of legislation. It still remains undefined in section 10 of the bill. It could mean anything that suits the government at any time. Sinn Fein’s ‘Brit’s Out Everybody Else In’ policy came up with an all-embracing scatter gun bunch of amendments specifying that reference to a person’s migrant status included “persons seeking international protection, persons with refugee status, persons with permission to remain and persons with any other regular or irregular migrant status”.
SF’s amendments weren’t included in the governments presentation of the most recent version of the act, which has stalled in the Seanad. Sinn Féin fired off the second barrel of their scatter gun and went for broke by including proposals that “bias, prejudice, contempt, hostility and bigotry” be included in the bill as hate.
On top of that they wanted to include a ‘thought crime’ category by extending the legal recognition of hatred to include people who were merely presumed to be part of a group that could be included under any of their proposed protected characteristics including the above mentioned references “to persons seeking international protection, persons with refugee status, persons with permission to remain and persons with any other regular or irregular migrant status”.
Then suddenly everything changed, ‘changed utterly’. A terrible calamity had taken place. The people spoke up. Sinn Fein’s justice spokesperson, TD Pa Daly’s blustering excuse for their hurried about turn said “Unfortunately, the Government has pressed ahead bullishly without taking on board any of the concerns which have been raised by Sinn Féin and others… Sinn Féin has raised a number of serious concerns about flaws in this legislation as it has proceeded through the Oireachtas.” It didn’t go far enough for SF is now their excuse. The real reason of course is the fright they got when they suddenly woke up to the fact that the electorate weren’t ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. “The people have spoken. God damn them” said one government member to me who doesn’t want to be named. Sinn Fein’s expletives were much richer than that.
The Referenda massive defeat seems to have also spooked the main government party, Fine Gael who have now joined the call for the bill to be shelved. Charlie Flanagan and Michael Ring said Fine Gael should get back (scurry) to its roots and focus on law and order. The safe law and order call in an increasingly lawless country is echoed by Simon Harris the new Taoiseach. Sounds good, means nothing.
Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea dared to squeak up and say that Justice Minister Helen McEntee is using this bill of hers to play to the “woke gallery”. Aren’t his FF party leading the charge into ‘wokeness’ with Micheal Martin at the helm?’
X owner Elon Musk has already said he will pay for the legal defence of anybody who wants to challenge the hate speech laws. Varadkar who mysteriously resigned as Taoiseach on his recent return from Washington and consequently has no political status suspects that Elon Musk was “showboating”. Was Varadkar pushed or did he slip on his own bullshit? He is expected to soon make an exit out of the country to join with his buddies in the globalist WEF. Meanwhile the exodus from FG is turning into a stampede.
