Approval for Stringfellow's Dublin strip club highlights how both the legitimate and criminal aspects of the industry are growing, writes Arthur Beesley, Senior Business Correspondent.
Peter Stringfellow opens his newest strip club in Parnell Street in the coming weeks in the face of local opposition and concern that the women who work for him risk being drawn deeper into Dublin's sex underworld.
Never a man to shun an opportunity to promote his business, Stringfellow's appearance at a licencing hearing in Dublin District Court last Monday made him the public face of a rapidly expanding sex industry that operates upfront in legitimate business and covertly in the criminal arena. Vast amounts of money are involved - and huge numbers of clients.
There was always a discreet and lucrative sex industry in Ireland, even in the most pious of times. Thanks to inventive interpreations of the Public Dancehalls Act - unforeseen, for sure, at the time of its enactment in 1935 - the lap-dancing phenomenon brought the industry into the open in the boom years. Several club owners have been prosecuted for tax and work permit offences, yet it is a business that continues to grow.
A ruling on Monday by Judge Ann Watkin means that Stringfellow and his associates Alan McEvoy and Thomas Butler will run a perfectly legal enterprise in the Parnell centre. There will be no private dancing areas, but nude women will perform table-side dancing and topless women will dance in stage areas. What is more, Stringfellow bills the club as an enterprise with the highest of standards.
Such business generally attracts people who like to keep a low profile, but Stringfellow's associate Alan McEvoy is well known as former manager of the Cranberries rock band and an business associate of other pop figures such as the singer Ronan Keating and his wife Yvonne. In a booming economy, the financial attractions of the legitimate and the illegal parts of the sex business are obvious. No matter what form of activity is in question, sex always makes lots of money.
That will be the objective of the Stringfellow's company Sabley Taverns, even its main activity is described in Companies Office filings as "general construction of buildings and civil engineering". Indeed, Stringfellow's "first Irish stripper" Jillian Johnson told the Daily Mirror this week that his dancers can expect to make up to €4,000 per night.
If that's what the dancer makes, it's a fair bet that the club will make more. Still, it's a big if. But while Garda sources believe the dance business can involve prostitution off the premises, clubs in Dublin were found to be operating within the law after a series of raids last autumn.
By contrast, raids in 2003 led to court appearances for many club operators. Since then, the accession of 10 new EU members a year later means that work permits are no longer required for women from eastern Europe. Still, high unemployment and the lack of work opportunities for women in many of the former Soviet states tells a story about about the preponderance of east European dancers.
Known as Operation Quest, the 2003 investigation looked at tax and immigration issues. It cast light on the individuals who run clubs in Dublin and the amounts of money available to them. For example, a court in Dublin heard that the manageress of Leeson street club Strings, Mary Cullen, had €140,000 in a bank account in Spain. The latest available abridged accounts for Cullen's company, Zalawir Builders, are for the period to October 1999, at which stage the company's profit and loss account showed a deficit of €120,432.
In addition, official sources said Dublin businessman Pat O'Keeffe - operator of the Angels club on Leeson street and another club in Galway - made a tax settlement of €800,000 with the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB). The latest abridged accounts for O'Keeffe's company, Fatchef Catering, shows that its profit and loss account had a deficit of €80,863 in October 2004.
O'Keeffe's settlement was not unique. According to senior Garda sources, the CAB received settlements of a similar scale from other club operators.
Just as Stringfellow's associate Alan McEvoy is making the move into the sex industry after years in mainstream business, others have used their background in lap-dancing as a springboard into the mainstream.
Businessman Chris Kelly, owner of Club Lapello on Dame street in Dublin, now operates two of the biggest pubs in the city centre. His company Starshine View held €119,861 in cash in July 2004, but its profit and loss was in the red with a deficit of €69,904. Kelly is reported to have paid €5 million for the Capitol Lounge on Aungier street and €3.2 million for the lease on Sinnott's, in the basement of the St Stephen's Green centre.
That's a world away from the prostitution rackets elsewhere in the city, where the economic expansion means that more money than ever is available for the sex trade. In addition, the proliferation of apartment schemes means that brothel-keepers have access to a steady stream of premises from which they can run their business.
Convicted brothel-keepers in Dublin include former RUC reservist Peter McCormack, Samantha Hutton from Clondalkin, west Dublin, and Tom McDonnell from Cooraclare, Co Clare. In business since the 1980s, McDonnell was served with a judgment for €1.75 million in 1999 for unpaid income tax and interest. Gardaí estimated he was making up to €5,000 per week at that time and had 12 prostitutes working for him.
By contrast, gardaí discovered 32 mobile phones in a recent raid on one brothel-keeper. They believe this could indicate that the man has 32 prostitutes working for him.
Garda sources say the model is simple, with mobile phone numbers for initial contacts in circulation in magazine adverts and a prominent website such as escortsireland.com. A prostitute might make €100 per half-hour "trick", half of which goes to the house. An enforcer always collects money at the end of an eight-hour shift, meaning that the brothel-keeper always gets paid.
A prostitute could see 20 clients in a shift, meaning she would get €1,000 while the house gets €1,000. The business carries on 365 days a year, with busy periods on the weekends of big GAA, soccer and rugby matches.
Because it takes place indoors, the brothel business is more attractive than street level prostitution practiced by up to 400 women in Dublin. Many are drug-addicts, in need of money to feed a €400-per-day drug habit and maybe as much again for their partner.
Some are only occasional prostitutes, driven by the need to make ends meet for their children. Gardaí say the same figures re-appear each year in August, just before the end of the school holidays, and in November, before the onset of the Christmas season.
This desperate picture is the flipside of Stringfellow's glamourous take on the sex industry.
