The Disappearing of Hate Crime in the Irish Criminal Justice Process

The Republic of Ireland is unique in Western democracies in not having legislation which targets the hate element of a crime (Perry 2001). There is no obligation upon the court to take either a bias motivation, or demonstration of bias, into account when determining the appropriate sanction to impose in a given case (Haynes and Schweppe 2016). The State has argued that, in spite of this absence, the criminal justice system in Ireland is adequate to addressing the hate element of crimes. This conclusion has been contested, in particular by civil society stakeholders who advocate for commonly targeted groups (Haynes et al. 2015, also see chapters in this volume). This chapter provides an evidentiary-based intervention in this debate, informed by extensive empirical research conducted by the authors in 2015.