Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

I thank the Minister for coming to the House and for his obvious commitment and comforting words. If I was one of the very dangerous organised criminals who are obviously at the top of the pile, profiteering from these vulnerable and frightened people, I would be pretty happy because I would have another 12 months at least to continue to profiteer. A lot of what I was going to say has been said, so I will shorten my speech a little. The Minister listed the measures he intends to take, including robust legislation and a national action plan. Senator Bacik made reference to education. It really worried me, listening to Paul Maguire today, to hear that the purchase of sex in this country seems to have become normal and accepted. Nineteen year olds are purchasing sex. We all know who we think purchases sex, but 19 year old boys? We seriously have a problem. We do not need legislation for this; we need to ask the Minister for Education and Skills to come to the House, because this is a social problem and we need to start thinking about how to educate our young people immediately. Obviously, this will be a long process. This is something that was done in Sweden as well as the introduction of legislation. I urge the Minister to pass this on to the Minister for Education and Skills and ask him to join forces with his own Department, which I know is very busy. We need to make sure we educate all our young people to show them this is not a way for us to live or to treat other human beings.

I ask the Minister, and everyone who is sitting here this evening or watching the monitors, to close their eyes and imagine their son, daughter, nephew, niece, brother, sister or good friend being in this situation. It could have happened to any of us. I feel so fortunate, so enclosed, so nurtured to be in this beautiful House so far away from these people, who are yet so close to us. They are 20 minutes from us. I really respected the Minister's speech and was so comforted by him. I know the European Presidency is coming up, but we must find the time to give protection to these vulnerable and desperately frightened people who are all over this country.

I will pick up on a point made by Senator Cummins. I appreciate that we have targeted law enforcement out there trying to help these people. Paul Maguire was here today at lunchtime. Only recently he was up in Dundalk filming two women who are in this awful work. Only 55 minutes after he had filmed them in an apartment, there was a raid by the police, who arrested the women. They were dragged to the police station and down to court and were bailed out by their pimp, who produced himself as a friend. He moved them from Dundalk to Christchurch and within a day they were back at work, seeing 15 clients the same night. They have to report their whereabouts to the Garda every week, so every week they go back to Dundalk and are made to lie that they are living there. Their English is not great. They are moving to Christchurch, down the country and to the west. These people have no sense of where they are. The Garda has no hope when it is the women they are targeting and not the clever, brilliant, dangerous, desperate criminals that the Minister is up against.

If we do adopt part of the Swedish model and impose small fines on the people who buy sex, this might be a way for the Minister's people and the Garda to find a way towards the dangerous drug-running criminals. I listened to what Senator Norris said, and we do not want to hurt the families of those clients, but the clients represent another way to find and identify the men who are at the top of this sordid and horrible situation that we find ourselves in.