TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has said he “strongly disagrees” with people who dismiss hate crimes as being “wokeism”, claiming that Ireland is seeing a rise in racism. 

The Fine Gael leader said that although Ireland is not experiencing the same rise of the far-right as other European countries, he suggested similar trends seen elsewhere are occurring on these shores. 

“To the extent that we have far right parties at all, they’re not significantly represented in the Dáil,” he said. 

“But we are seeing a rise in racism, that’s very evident to me. People protesting outside accommodation centres, people spreading conspiracy theories around replacement ideology – all this kind of nonsense.” 

The Taoiseach said that the use of violence against people who are “of a different colour or a different ethnic background” is a “matter of real concern”.

“It is one of the reasons why we have a national strategy against racism and it’s one of the reasons why I do think we need to have hate legislation,” he said.  

“I see some people dismissing hate crimes as being ‘wokeism’ or domestic and gender-based violence as being some form of ‘wokeism’. I totally disagree with that view of things.”

It comes amid ongoing opposition to the Government’s proposed hate crime legislation, which has led to concerns among civil liberties advocates and from both sides of the political spectrum.

However, Varadkar suggested that legislating for hate crime would show a recognition of the seriousness of such crimes.

He said: “A murder is a serious crime and assault is a serious crime. Hate crime is a serious crime. Crime against women and men that’s gender-based or sexual, these are all serious crimes and we need to treat them all seriously.”  

Hate speech law

The proposed hate speech law, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022, will not progress until the autumn.

The proposed legislation has proved to be highly contentious with a chorus of negative reactions to the bill growing louder in recent weeks.

It is understood that following a Seanad debate on the bill last month, a number of government senators requested a meeting with Justice Minister Helen McEntee to highlight their concerns about the new law. 

The minister has maintained that the proposed legislation “is not radical as detractors claim”.

Meanwhile, figures released by An Garda Síochána earlier this year showed that there has been a 26% increase in the number of hate crimes and hate-related incidents recorded in 2022 compared with the previous year.

There were 582 hate crimes and hate-related (non-crime) incidents recorded last year, with 448 recorded in 2021.

With reporting from Christina Finn.