“…A Matter of Grave Concern”: Online Hate Speech in Ireland at the Intersection of Legislation and Case Law

Over the past few years, light has been shed on the limitations to Ireland’s legislation on cyber hate and hate crime more generally. This paper begins by presenting an overview of the issues of principle behind the criminalisation of online hate speech. Secondly, it moves to the Irish legal framework and identifies the shortcomings in the country’s current legal position. The study then focuses on recent Irish case law: by drawing on the pragma-dialectical approach, two cases are analysed with a view to courts’ argumentation within disputes arising from hate speech and online hate crime. The implications of the two judgments are finally assessed in the light of recent calls for extant legislation to be reformed and the contents of the Criminal Justice (Hate Crime) Bill 2021 now before the Irish parliament.