Recommendations

1. General recommendations for the accession to international agreements and conventions.

There are a number of United Nations conventions that Ireland has signed but not ratified that could help strengthen the position of minorities and human rights activists within the country. In particular, the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture, the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families require accession.^[1]

2. General recommendations for adjustments to the legal framework.

The major lacuna within Ireland’s response to xenophobia and radicalism is specific hate crime legislation. While the 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act and subsequent Equality acts (1998-2004) have closed the general legal net around discrimination, a more explicit recognition ofhate crime as a criminal offence with its own specific statute is still not forthcoming. A piece of legislation therefore that incorporates the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights ‘hate crime’ definitionfor non-violent acts of harassment would do much to garner confidence among minority communities and provide a more systematic basis for official recording – tapping into the prevalence of the phenomena within wider society.^[2]

A second and related measure would be the lowering the legal barriers set against the travelling community in Ireland. Efforts are being made to investigate and report on the possibility of recognising a separate ethnic identity for Travellers – with a separate ethnic identity recognised by the Irish state in March 2017 of the period under study. In addition to this, however, wider measures are needed to tackle disadvantage suffered by the travelling community in education, the workplace and in the hands of law enforcers.^[3]

3. General recommendations for the executive bodies in the field of enforcement of law and human rights.

As noted above, practices to greater boost diversity within the national Garda would help generate greater confidence amongst minority communities in law enforcement agencies. Better training to spot and record hate crime would also help foster greater trust. This could also be extended to the online space. Reflecting on the sad case of Cyrus Christie, better attempts are needed by law enforcement to interdict online forms of hate speech. Finally, and picking up on the UN’s July 2017 on human rights in Ireland, greater steps need to made to addressprisoner treatment, support for victims of people trafficking, and police accountability – particularly when it comes to women prisoners and spot checks on Garda stations.^[4]

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