Sir, – Prostitution has occurred in all societies throughout recorded history. Some countries prohibit it, some permit it and regulate it as a business. In either event, prostitution continues. When we criminalise the transaction (by either party), it must hide from the law, so it goes underground. Neither provider nor user now has the protection of the law, and prostitutes are exposed to criminal intermediaries who can coerce them, confiscate earnings and physically abuse them. Because the business in Ireland is invisible to the law, anything goes. Women can be trafficked and enslaved, working conditions can be vile, health and hygiene precautions can be ignored. Intensifying the legal prohibition will serve only to make this worse. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN McCORMICK,
Wicklow Town.
Sir, –To date the majority of people discussing the future of sex workers in Ireland do not, and have never sold sex in any way and never will, with the understandable result that most of them are mistaken about the facts of the issue.
I do not believe that there is any moral justification for the issue to proceed further without an opportunity for people who have worked in the sex industry to challenge those misconceptions autonomously and on equal terms in public debate, something with which, to date, the main protagonists have declined to engage.
If it concerned any other subculture or social group this state of affairs would be considered appalling.
Because of the stigma attached to sex work, it is hard for sex workers to feel comfortable engaging with such a process, but stigma should not cancel out human rights. – Yours, etc,
GAYE DALTON,
Donard,
Co Wicklow.