Sir, – The Immigrant Council of Ireland attributes the increase in attacks against sex workers to the decriminalisation provided for under the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, which it claims allows them to report such incidents "without any fear of criminal repercussions in the process, which was not possible before the adoption of the law" (September 5th).
However, most of the attacks appear to have been perpetrated against indoor sex workers, who were not decriminalised under the 2017 Act. Selling sex indoors has never been illegal – the only change the law brought in for these workers was the criminalisation of their clients. The Immigrant Council of Ireland also ignores the direct testimony of sex workers, quoted by The Irish Times (News, September 4th), who explicitly affirm their experience of worsened conditions under the law. Isn't it about time we stopped allowing policy to be dictated by ideology (or "ethos" as it describes it), and started treating sex workers as the experts in their own lives? – Yours, etc,
WENDY LYON,
Dublin 7.