PROSTITUTION is one of the most lucrative hidden parts of Irish society, and one which shows every sign of having grown rapidly in recent years.
The latest issue of the magazine In Dublin carries more than 30 display advertisements for "health studios" and "escort services", the most common modern euphemisms for the world's oldest profession. There are many more prostitutes advertising in the personal columns.
Almost all advertisements carry a mobile telephone number. Most are for the services of one or a number of women working from new city centre apartments. On the first telephone contact, callers are often told to go to a specific location, such as a public telephone, from where they are asked to call a second time.
In some instances this allows one of those organising the business to take a look at the potential client before giving him the address of the apartment. But normally the customer receives a call at the telephone box, so that the address is not given out over a mobile telephone, which can be intercepted by gardai.
Charges can be as high as £200 an hour, but are typically up to £150 an hour with some clients offered a half hour session for £100.
Of £120 the prostitute can expect to pay about £40 to the brothel keeper.
On the streets sex is much cheaper. In Dublin, Cork and Galway, all types of sex are offered.
In Dublin gardai have noticed an increase in the number of women travelling from Britain to work as prostitutes, staying only for a couple of weeks.
Advertisements in Irish publications now often feature Caribbean, Italian or Asian women with names like "Ebony", most of whom will have come from London.
According to one member of a voluntary organisation which works with prostitutes in Dublin, there are up to 600 prostitutes working in the city at any one time. Some travel occasionally as a "call out" escort service to the surrounding counties.
Although prostitution is an offence and the Garda is mandated to act against it, individual gardai often tend to consider it a low priority unless it becomes a public nuisance.
They most commonly come into contact with the trade due to complaints from residents in an apartment building where a brothel has opened for business. In these cases, it is difficult to prove prostitution, but the problem can be solved more quickly by visiting and telling the organiser that it is time to move on. Almost all will do so immediately, only to open up elsewhere shortly afterwards.
There is no Garda vice squad - each district is responsible for its own area, making it easier for a brothel moved from one to set up in the next.
According to the Garda figures - for 1995, there were two known cases of brothel keeping, and criminal proceedings commenced in one. There were no known cases the previous year.
The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act of 1993, which legalised homosexuality, also made prostitution and living off a prostitute's earnings a criminal offence.
The Act provides for fines of up to £10,000 and a six months jail term for the offence of organising prostitution, or brothel keeping. Conviction for prostitution (offering or seeking) itself can bring a fine of up to £250 for a first conviction, £500 for a second, and £500 and up to four weeks in prison for a third and subsequent offences.
The penalties also apply to those who refuse to obey an order from a garda, who suspects they are involved in prostitution, to move away from a public place.
This law against loitering applies both to prostitutes and clients. There are other penalities including fines of up to £1,000 and up to a year in jail where a person solicits or importunes another for a sexual offence involving a person under 17 years or a mentally impaired person.
A survey of 84 Irish prostitutes prepared for the Eastern Health Board and published last May found that most were aged between 35 and 44. Only a third had completed secondary education, and half had other employment (usually factory, office, shop, bar or hotel work) before becoming prostitutes. Half were married but of these half were separated.
Most had children, and 11 of the 84 were grandmothers. All but a handful of those surveyed said they started prostitution for money.
Almost half worked in "parlours", which they regarded as safer, cleaner and more discreet than business on the streets. Almost 60 per cent of the women said they believed the level of violence against women had risen.
Some said this was because more young drug addicts were working as prostitutes, and they feared being attacked by them. But a fifth of the women surveyed had been beaten by customers, and 40 per cent had had difficulties getting away from a client or getting them to leave the apartment.
These were usually clients who were drunk and claiming not to be satisfied by the service.
The survey also showed that prostitutes in Dublin felt the new law had had an effect, in that the apartments were more likely to be raided by gardai, and those working on the streets were more regularly told to "move on".