MANY HOSTELS for asylum-seekers are sex "honeypots" stalked by evil human traffickers who exploit immigrant women desperate for cash to top up their meagre allowance from the State, a conference on trafficking and the sex industry was told.
Gerardine Rowley, spokesperson for Ruhama, which helps women who want to escape from prostitution, told the conference in Sligo on Saturday that many immigrants felt trapped by the Government ban on them earning a living while awaiting a decision on their asylum applications.
They receive only €19 a week from the State, although their food and hostel accommodation is also paid for.
Ms Rowley told the public conference organised by Labour Women: "Most people give their children more than €20 a week for pocket money. What the immigrants are given is appalling.
She added: "Some of these refugee hostels have become honeypots. Men are hanging around and targeting women for prostitution.
The conference is one of a number on trafficking and the sex industry being organised around the country by Labour Women.
Labour Party justice spokesperson Pat Rabbitte, who opened the conference, said human trafficking was a multi-billion dollar business - the third most profitable illegal trade in the world, after arms and drugs. "Those trafficked are mainly young vulnerable women fleeing poverty in their own countries of origin or deceived into seeking a better life on the false undertakings of the criminal networks involved in trafficking," Mr Rabbitte said.
He observed that Ireland was behind most of the rest of the developed world when it recently made human trafficking a criminal offence.
He said that, although imperfect, it represented a major step forward. "The very fact that the Bill has been enacted has in itself improved awareness of what is an evil practice and one that this country can no longer dismiss as having no relevance here," he said.
"There is, at a minimum, anecdotal evidence that Ireland's sex industry has not been immune from the criminal networks that profit from the trafficking of vulnerable young women for the purposes of sexual exploitation."