Sir, – The Minister for Health has said that he wants to remove the stigma around sexual health and promote a mature and open attitude to sexual health. We at Sex Workers Alliance Ireland (SWAI) are therefore deeply concerned that sex workers were not mentioned in Leo Varadkar’s five-year public sexual health strategy.
Approximately 800 sex workers are active in the Republic on any given day and to ignore sex work when discussing sexual health is irresponsible. There is empirical evidence worldwide showing that the circumstances created by criminalising the purchase of sex lead to unsafe sex practices and the spread of STIs and HIV. According to the medical journal Lancet, full decriminalisation of the sex industry could avert new HIV transmission by up to 46 per cent. To ignore this, at a time when the Government is set to pass a law criminalising the purchase of sex, is an egregious error. – Yours, etc,
KATE McGREW,
Co-ordinator,
SWAI, Dublin 1.