North inner Dublin needs facilities for children - not the "adult entertainment" of Peter Stringfellow's lapdancing club, writes Maria Mhic Mheanmain.
We can all remember the raid on a lapdancing club in Dublin two years ago following which gardaí stated that they had discovered employees engaging in sex acts with customers.
Many of these girls were undocumented non-nationals who were clearly being exploited by the management, who preyed on their vulnerability. The gardaí were particularly successful in closing down the club because of these sex acts.
Unfortunately these are not isolated incidents occurring in a peculiarly Irish context. It is well documented internationally that lapdancing clubs are often a front for prostitution and can be linked to drugs, human trafficking and general criminality.
For example, last year Glasgow City Council conducted a study on lapdancing clubs in that city, and found that they were linked to prostitution. The report recommended that these clubs be licensed as sex establishments.
Indeed, media reports this past week tell of a man who visited a lapdancing club in Britain and subsequently paid a lapdancer tens of thousands for her sexual services. It was his legal action against her (for the return of money he said was a loan) which brought this case to light. It is hardly an isolated incident. Most men would be reluctant to highlight their sexual weakness and would remain silent.
Can we really fool ourselves into thinking that it is all just naked women dancing in front of men?
Lapdancing is not a victimless and harmless entertainment. Alan Bailey of the Garda Síochána's Operation Quest, which deals with links between lapdancing clubs and criminality, disagrees with this perception.
"It's just another facet of the sex industry," he has said. "It's total exploitation."
Is it any wonder that residents of the north inner city, particularly those in the Parnell Street area, are decidedly uneasy with the lapdancing/exotic nightclub proposed for the district?
For readers unfamiliar with Dublin geography, it is a residential and commercial area which Peter Stringfellow has chosen for his business. As you exit the premises, three or four storeys of family residences over retail outlets (including Smyths toy store) are across the road. Turn right and you pass the city centre's most popular cinema. On your left is Kings Inns Street where my Alma Mater, a secondary school for girls, is to be found. Yes, a strip joint beside a convent school.
If you go along Parnell Street to the Rotunda maternity hospital and Parnell Square, where a primary school is situated, you pass literally hundreds of private apartments with retail outlets on the ground floor, council flats and social housing units.
As with all densely populated areas, children are very much a presence on the streets. It is entirely understandable that the parents of these children are particularly worried about the effect that such establishments will have on the area. Not least is their concern for their childrens' safety considering the clientele such a business would attract.
The north inner city is renowned as a deprived area. It has a long history of unemployment, drug abuse and general disenfranchisement. The vast majority of people here have always been friendly, decent, and hardworking (when they could get work).
Is it fair that an area which is only beginning to emerge from a generation of depression should now have more problems foisted on it from outside? It is well known that property prices and the value of other businesses depreciate when the sex industry enters the neighbourhood.
There are already six sex shops in nearby Capel Street. Many customers will prefer to shop where neither they nor their children have to see such sleaze. So much for Stringfellow's assertion that his facility will gentrify the area.
Considering the young population in the area, and the dangers they face in avoiding anti-social behaviour, surely we should be more concerned with providing facilities for children than for dubiously described "adult entertainment". I dread to think what the mothers of Parnell Street and Dominick Street will go through if this club opens.
We should not condone this sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and weak men anywhere. I fear that acceptance of these clubs will lead to a change in societal attitudes and bring about a tolerance for the objectification and commercialisation of women's bodies.
However I am particularly concerned for my infant daughter. She has to grow up in this city. I want to be able to bring her shopping in town. I want to be able to bring her to the cinema without feeling the stares of lecherous men who have been sexually aroused by lapdancers in the bar next door. I want to send her to my old school without having perverts at the bottom of the street. Am I asking too much? I think not.