A new report launched by University of Limerick experts today is calling for tougher sentences for hate crimes.

Researchers want to see the creation of new offences to protect vulnerable communities along with longer sentences for public order offences, assault and harrassment.

In her foreword to the Report, Professor Barbara Perry of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, leading world expert on hate crime, states: “The absence of hate crime legislation in Ireland is a glaring anomaly in the European context, and indeed, across the West. Without it, Ireland stands virtually alone in its silence with respect to protecting vulnerable communities from the harms of this particular form of violence.”

The project surveyed 14 advocacy groups for those with disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities and the LGBT community which detailed instances of physical and verbal abuse.

Senator Ivana Bacik says there is a lack of laws that deal with hate crime in Ireland: