Well god damn.It's hard to get good information on this but it seems like the word "blasphemy" has a different connotation up there than it does
. Here's the straightest definition I could get:
If the new law prohibiting publishing or uttering blasphemous matter becomes law, as proposed yesterday by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, they could face fines of up to €100,000 (maximum fine was dropped since this article was published - br) and have their homes raided by members of the Garda Síochána in order to seize the offending material.
For that to happen, a court will have to be satisfied the matter published is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”, and that the outrage was intentional.
Yes, the wording can be twisted such that
the most excellent Richard Dawkins!!! could be sued for agitating the fundies (though if you poke around more you'll find there's a caveat for "works of artistic merit" or something of the sort, so probably not) but the intent of the bill overall seems to be an anti-Hate Speech sort of thing. Nothing at all to get up in arms about, but I can see a bunch of Yanks ending up looking like wankers over it before all this tripe's been sorted out.