The Irish government is reportedly set to reject demands from the European Union to implement hate speech legislation after Dublin abandoned plans to do so last year.
In September of last year, the Irish government scrapped plans to criminalise so-called hate speech in its Criminal Justice Bill, which would have allowed the state to send someone to prison for up to five years for “incitement to hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics”.
The move to abandon the controversial section of the bill came as Justice Minister Helen McEntee admitted that it did “not have a consensus” among the Irish population.
In response, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, warned that Dublin may face legal action from Brussels for failing to meet the bloc’s stringent speech standards.
The commission said in May that Ireland “still fails to transpose the provisions related to criminalising the public incitement to violence or hatred against a group or a member of such group based on certain characteristics, as well as the conducts of condoning, denial and gross trivialisation of international crimes and the Holocaust”.
According to a report from The Sunday Times, which cited sources within the coalition government, Dublin will respond this week by declaring that the country is “already properly transposing EU directives”.
“We don’t believe the commission has given sufficient weight to Ireland’s existing common law on this or to our own existing legal framework,” the source added.
Another government official told the paper that while there are no plans to implement new speech-restricting laws, Dublin believes it has a “solid” legal defence against the European Commission’s demands.
Although it is one of the few European nations not to have formalised hate speech restrictions, Ireland will reportedly point to case law which has established that racist motivations can be viewed as an aggravating factor during criminal trials.
While Dublin has faced pressure from Brussels over the issue, it has won the support of the Trump administration in the United States, which has been a frequent critic of the increasingly authoritarian speech restrictions in fellow EU nations, such as Germany.
Last month, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor said: “The European Union is threatening legal action against Ireland if it does not adopt the speech rules designed by bureaucrats in Brussels, even after the Irish government dropped such legislation last year due to lack of democratic consensus.
“The United States is deeply committed to supporting freedom of expression and national sovereignty. We support the Irish people and our shared commitment to fundamental freedoms.”
Protecting free speech in Ireland has been a priority for top Trump admin figures such as Vice President JD Vance even before coming into office, with Vance saying in 2023: “Ireland is a beautiful country with wonderful people. I hope they don’t destroy ancient liberties out of a desire to eliminate ‘offensive’ ideas.”
