“Significant improvements” are needed to new legislation on hate speech to avoid a situation where the courts struggle to interpret the law, according to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL).

The ICCL also suggested that the Government is “steamrolling” the complex legislation through the Oireachtas and this is “risking bad law”.

Spokesperson, Doireann Ansbro, decried the loose definition of hatred. The Bill says “‘hatred’ means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics”. However, Ms Ansbro said this amounts to a definition of “hatred is hatred”.

She added that the ICCL is concerned that the courts “will struggle to interpret what hatred is and therefore people who potentially should be convicted won’t be convicted”.

She also raised concern about freedom of expression and said ICCL would like to see an explicit reference to protections under the European declarations on rights as well as the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.

She cited one European court case involving the right to shock, offend and disturb and said: “We have to be clear that we’re not criminalising offensive language and we’re not protecting people from being offended.”