Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari:

To clarify, THB means "traffic in human beings". I apologise for using the acronym. In answer to the question about what services we are asking for, I note that victims of human trafficking are not homogenous in their categories nor in their experiences. As such, the type of services which are needed will be very different for those who are victims of trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation than for those who are victims of trafficking for labour exploitation. Not only will the experiences of the victims differ, so will the type of reaction. We very often see trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. They are more or less the most well-known effects. I am not a mental health expert.

There are no such services in the country, so setting them up would require looking at other jurisdictions where these types of services are already in place. I am sure there are people in Ireland who have the expertise, but on top of clinical expertise they would need an understanding of the phenomenon of human trafficking and the cultural sensitivities around providing services to people who are from different countries and different cultural and religious backgrounds. Furthermore, they will need to understand the physical phenomena that intersect, such as torture and the physical violence that arise in trafficking.

I am not necessarily saying that this expertise is not already in the country. However, it is about putting together a programme that delivers mental health for victims of human trafficking as part of our national referral mechanism, which is the mechanism set up by the State to provide services, including accommodation, legal counselling, and physical health. Mental health must be added as one of the key parts of the service provision.

The Deputy asked about victims of human trafficking in the prison system. Yes, this is one of the areas in which we work with victims of trafficking and forced criminality. We have worked a lot with people who were trafficked for the purposes of cannabis cultivation. I sincerely doubt that they are being provided with a mental health service, either because they are not offered one, or because it is not available to them. I say that because I would have done much of the assessment. I have gone into prisons across the country and met with them, and I know that basic interpretation services are not there for them. The legal services available to them are extremely limited. Moreover, accessing victims of human trafficking in prison is very hard for agencies like us that have the expertise, because we can only go there if we are invited by a solicitor. If solicitors do not recognise us as being experts, or simply do not want to engage with us, then we cannot approach these people. There are certainly no specialised services in prison for victims of human trafficking. I cannot attest to the quality of the services available to the mainstream prison population.

FGM is obviously not only linked to victims of trafficking. It is a broader cultural phenomenon. There is an organisation called Akidwa that does a lot of advocacy on the issue. If people have experienced female genital mutilation, there are certain health providers and health specialists who can address that. I do not know to what level that is mainstreamed in the health services. I imagine that victims have to be referred to people who have the expertise to address that from a physical point of view and from a mental health point of view. I think that covers the Deputy's questions.