Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Review of Legislation on Prostitution: Discussion (Resumed)

2:25 pm

Mr. Paul Maguire:

We talked to a number of the women involved in the industry who told us that passports and official identification documents had been taken from them. As a consequence, they were not free to leave the country. In one group on which we focused heavily, they appeared to have very little free time in which they were not under the management of somebody else. If they were not being moved at 3 a.m., somebody was sitting in an apartment watching and managing them. They had very little freedom.