A chara, – The Dublin Aids Alliance is of the view that criminalising prostitution in Ireland is likely to produce a rise in HIV infection amongst sex workers and their clients by inadvertently pushing them further to the fringes of society thereby increasing the barriers they will experience in accessing health services.
If Ireland legislates to criminalise the buyers of sex (as per the Swedish model), sex workers will be forced further away from day to day health support services, running the risk of increased HIV diagnosis. We know that the report of the UN Aids Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work, published in 2011, recommends that states remove criminal penalties for the purchase and sale of sex and establish legal and policy environments conducive to universal access to HIV services for sex workers. It would be prudent not to ignore this.
If Ireland adopts the Swedish model, sex workers and their clients will be increasingly at risk of contracting HIV. Criminalising the buyers of sex has negative implications for both public health in Ireland and reducing the prevalence of HIV in Ireland.
We need to tread carefully when introducing legislation that may well have unintended consequences for some of the most vulnerable people living within our society. – Is mise,
NIALL MULLIGAN,
Director,
Dublin AIDS Alliance,
Parnell Square West,
Dublin 1.
Sir, – Edward Mathews of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation rejects the idea that sex work is anything other than organised by criminal gangs with sex workers overwhelmingly under their control. How then does he explain what the PSNI has said about this in Northern Ireland – that the majority of prostitution there is through independent prostitutes who are not trafficked or controlled by organised crime groups? We do not have enough information to say what the position is here since independent research has not been done.
He quotes global figures for the value of sex trafficking but interestingly does not give the relevant figures, those so often claimed for its value here by Turn Off the Red Light. At the hearings, the Garda representative refused to put a figure on it beyond saying it was in the millions.
His claims about the violence and exploitation can also be compared to the independent research by Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice. This showed that no locally based sex workers surveyed supported criminalising the purchase of sex, with 61 per cent believing it would make them less safe and 85 per cent saying it would not reduce sex trafficking.
This does not support the notion of wholesale violent exploitation, the “horrible reality” he talks about so vividly.
Again, we do not have figures for the position here but such a baseline should be established before legislation is enacted.
As has been pointed out so often, the abolitionists do not want to hear from those whose welfare they so vehemently claim to represent. The same has happened in other countries, such as Denmark and France. Again, if the trafficking is as prevalent as he appears to suggest, why have the figures for all forms of this crime fallen since 2010?
This is a very contentious issue. It deserves the most open and honest debate with the best available evidence on the table and the laying aside of ideological positions. – Yours, etc,
DAVID WALSH,
Maynooth, Co Kildare.
Sir, – While all decent people will favour measures to protect exploited and abused women, the widely differing views being expressed on your pages on prostitution and the law certainly make it difficult for an ordinary layperson to make sense of the whole matter.
However, regarding the type of law that should be adopted in relation to prostitution, one that would have the effect of simultaneously criminalising and legalising the same transaction, which the current Swedish law seems to do, would seem, on the face of it, to be utterly perverse. – Yours, etc,
HUGH GIBNEY,
Athboy,
Co Meath.