Dr. Derek Freedman:

I would not like Senator Bacik to have any impression that I am against decriminalisation. I am strongly in favour of decriminalisation. What I was trying to put forward was the concept of setting boundaries of what is and is not acceptable.

The Swedish model is very attractive, as presented in Sweden, but this is not Sweden and this is not Swedish society. Swedish society is different and is very controlled. In terms of STIs, for instance, there is compulsory notification. If one catches chlamydia, one's doctor must make a list of all one's partners, which is then notified to a public health authority. It then becomes part of the public remit. That is the type of very tight control that exists there.

Senator Bacik is implying - it would be an absolutely marvellous idea - that if clients are taken into the system, they would be helped to deal with their problems. Since we are doing so poorly at protecting our children, I do not think I could see resources being applied to protect the clients of prostitutes at this time. This would be a very idealistic thing. I deal with people on the ground who have problems, and we have to face that.

In a presentation made here in the autumn, people from Sweden said they were happy that they had virtually eliminated street prostitution. We have done that here through the mobile telephone, the Internet and the Irish weather. When I was thinking about this, I googled the words "Stockholm" and "escort" and got 2 million hits, so the problem has not been eliminated or dealt with in Stockholm. I never did see many people come back to me having had sex worker exposure in Scandinavia at any time, and there certainly has not been any sort of change. One sees the odd one and they are readily available.