Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality
Review of Legislation on Prostitution: Discussion (Resumed)
2:20 pm
Dr. Derek Freedman:
-----what it might do for the tourism industry. Senator O'Donovan has hit precisely on the correct points in that what we should be looking to do is to protect people from harm - in particular, to protect sex workers from exploitation and trafficking - and to protect under-age people.
We must put our resources into helping these people develop their lives into something different from sex work, which is a short cul-de-sac in anybody's life. We need to be sensitive in order to protect and acknowledge the dynamics of why people become sex workers. We need to ensure that if the clients of sex workers become exploitative or violent or display confrontational behaviour, they feel the full weight of the law and society upon them.