Election candidates who use racism, sexism or other hate speech should be automatically removed from the race, an Oireachtas committee heard on Tuesday. Bernard Joyce, director of the Irish Traveller Movement (ITM), said a “beefed-up” electoral commission should be empowered to impose “strong sanctions” to prevent to use of hate speech for political gain. Mr Joyce said the electoral commission “should be holding” election candidates who use discriminatory rhetoric “to account”. “We are concerned the two big parties... would have failed to run the minimum 30 per cent in the previous local elections,” she said. Extending the gender quota to local elections would force them to look beyond the traditional “male-dominated pools”, including chambers of commerce, and farming and sporting organisations.

Source: The Irish Times June 08, 2021 19:09 UTC