The Justice Minister will officially announce new hate crime legislation later today.
If it's adopted, it will allow the courts to examine a person's behaviour at the moment of an offence.
One example which would upgrade an offence to a hate crime could include shouting racist slurs.
Minister Helen McEntee says there's already some legislation in place on this, but she says it is far from strong enough:
"We have a law that was introduced back in 1989, the incitement to hatred act which was quite forward thinking at the time, but this does not include hate crime. We've had 50 convictions since 1989, so I think what's clear is that it doesn't work when it comes to prosecution. I want our laws to have teeth, I want them to be prosecutable and that's why I'm bringing about some of the changes."
