Fine Gael TD Simon Coveney has called for "aggressive, tough" legislation to target people who use prostitutes in Ireland.
Mr Coveney said we must target the acceptability of buying sex and warned against legalising brothels, with evidence from abroad suggesting that this can lead to bigger problems where trafficking was concerned.
Mr Coveney, who had been an MEP until his recent election to the 30th Dáil, was author of the European Parliament's 2004 annual report on human rights in the world.
He told the European Slave Trade conference in Trinity College Dublin, that figures from the Ruhama agency, which helps people escape prostitution, show that as many as 200 people had been trafficked to Ireland for sex purposes over the past decade.
He said indications from other countries were that this amounted in reality to "5, 10, 15 per cent" of the actual figure, due to secrecy in the sex industry.
"The Swedish attitude is the right one. First you tackle demand. It should be the same as with drugs and arms where [trafficking of] people are concerned," he said. It would take a brave politician to make "the unpopular decision targeting people who use prostitutes, in an aggressive and tough way. The local husband or businessman. But until we target the acceptability of buying sex we are at nothing," he said.
Mr Coveney told the conference, organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics and the Ireland En Route agency that he believed legislation being prepared on trafficking in Ireland was "totally inadequate" when it came to the protection of victims.
"It is not about illegal immigration. It's about people being abused, physically and sexually abused," he said. The political response to the issue in Ireland had been "quite simply pathetic".
Gráinne Healy, chairwoman of the European Women's Lobby's Observatory on Violence against Women, asked if we wanted a country where a Lithuanian 19-year-old "is available for your husband or my son?"
She said trafficking was "a thriving problem" in Ireland and welcomed the Government's signing of the European Council's Convention on Trafficking last April.
Nora Owen, former minister for justice and currently chairwoman of the Justice & Law Group at the Institute of European Affairs, highlighted the distinction between human trafficking and people smuggling.
It was inaccurate to say that Olaitan Llori was convicted of human trafficking in the Dublin Circuit Court on Wednesday, she said.
What was involved was by consent of both parties and so amounted to people smuggling. Human trafficking involved coercion, she said, and legislation here was not dealing with it.
She compared this with the "huge strides" where drug trafficking legislation in Ireland was concerned. Though the date for submissions on relevant legislation had passed, she suggested delegates write to Paul Murray at the Department of Justice and make representations personally to the new Minister, Brian Lenihan.
