The bulk of the sex trade in Ireland is run by organised crime gangs. Based on evidence that the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy (SERP) Institute has gathered over the last decade, fewer than 10 per cent of those who sell sex in Ireland are “independent”, operating freely of their own accord and keeping all of the money they make. The majority are controlled to varying degrees and their involvement in prostitution is “organised” by pimps and traffickers – those making the real money. Violence, fear and threats of destitution or serious harm to both the women themselves and their loved ones are the main tools of this control.
It is therefore no surprise that when women are questioned in brothels by gardaí, as they were during the recent Operation Global Chain, they respond with the usual “script”: “I am fine, I am working for myself, I am independent.” This script is provided to women by their organisers to avoid any further probing questions from law enforcement – and it is all too familiar, not only to police, but also to the frontline services that support women in the sex trade.
These operations rarely identify many victims of sexual exploitation in the moment – but they do lay the groundwork for victim identification in the future. The Garda National Protective Services Bureau itself notes that few people will tell gardaí that they have been trafficked during brothel “welfare checks” but that the bureau often experiences a “lag effect”, where victims will contact specialist gardaí at a later date, perhaps in a rare moment away from the watchful eye of their “organisers”, when they confirm that they are indeed being exploited and need help.
So while Michael McDowell is correct in his assertion, made in these pages recently, that “there is a lot of money to be made from prostitution”, some criticism of Ireland’s prostitution legislation, introduced by Frances Fitzgerald when she was minster for justice in 2017, fails to take account of the true nature of the Irish and international sex trades and how they are policed.
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The success of Garda operations are the direct result of an often unsung but very important protective element of Ireland’s prostitution legislation – the fact that the 2017 Act decriminalised those who sell sex. This resulted in a very significant change in policing mindset. Previously, those selling sex were treated as criminals, but the new law shifted the burden of criminality from their shoulders and placed it on those responsible for the harms of prostitution – the sex buyers, the pimps and the traffickers.
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This created the conditions for the Garda to police differently; given the violence and associated criminality that is rife in the sex trade, they began to approach all those selling sex as vulnerable individuals at risk of harm and were able to focus on enhancing their safety. It also paved the way for the welfare checks that are now so critical for letting victims of exploitation know that help is available, and for countless women to come forward and report physical and sexual violence they have experienced in prostitution, leading to many successful prosecutions for such offences.
At the same time, it is right to be critical of the absurdly low number of convictions secured against those who purchase sex since the 2017 Act came into force. This aspect of the legislation was designed to tackle demand – essentially to have a chilling effect on those who fuel the very existence of prostitution – the sex buyers. The framing – therefore implementation – of this aspect of the legislation has faced many challenges, as the Government’s own review attests.
Some observers suggest that brothels should be legalised, so that they can operate as safe co-operatives. But this flies in the face of the growing body of academic evidence that demonstrates that under fully legalised or fully decriminalised regimes – where prostitution is treated as a job like any other – the sex trade expands. This may increase the number of willing participants, the 10 per cent, but it also increases the 90 per cent – those who are coerced, exploited and trafficked.
The last thing we want for Ireland is the hellscape that is Germany’s legalised sex trade, earning that country the unenviable title of “the brothel of Europe”, or the mess that is Amsterdam’s legal trade, with areas of the red light district being closed down due to criminality and “nuisance.” New Zealand’s fully decriminalised regime has in the past been hailed as a panacea for Ireland. But the truth is that as an island nation with a very similar population size to Ireland’s, New Zealand’s sex trade is at least six times larger than ours and sexual exploitation is rife, with police reporting that the decriminalised regime severely hampers their efforts to detect victims of sex trafficking.
As for the notion of cosy brothel “co-operatives” that provide safety and welfare – many of the violent attacks against women in prostitution in Ireland have occurred in premises operating as brothels where several women were present at the same time. When young mother-of-four Geila Ibram was murdered in a Limerick apartment in 2023, at least one other woman in prostitution was present, alongside a man alleged to be an “organiser”.
If we really want to tackle the scourge of the highly exploitative sex trade in Ireland we must realise the full potential of Fitzgerald’s 2017 Act. This requires the recommendations made in the Government’s review of the legislation nearly 18 months ago to finally be implemented, including on-the-spot fines for sex buyers and enhanced powers and resources for the Garda National Protective Services Bureau to be able to “follow the money” and hold all those who profit from this egregious trade to account. There is also a need to raise greater public awareness of the fact that it is a crime to purchase sexual access to the body of another person in Ireland. Websites that profit from advertising prostitution need to be tackled – as legislators in Northern Ireland are currently doing. Together these measures could be a real game-changer for the fight against trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Ruth Breslin is Director of the SERP Institute
