Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

That was the reason I posed the question to the Minister concerning what would happen in the case of a young woman prosecuted for soliciting — precisely the circumstances as envisaged by Deputy Naughten. In other words, fear and intimidation go hand in hand with trafficking, where a young woman, fearful for her life and in the control and grasp of a criminal directing traffic and living off her earnings, is prosecuted for soliciting. She may be in fear for her safety if she were to say, in effect "The reason I am doing it is that I left my home country in the belief that I was going to England or Ireland to work for a living and get a job, and I have ended up here through no fault of my own." In those circumstances she may, indeed, be prosecuted. Does it impinge on the freedom of the DPP to decide on what prosecution the office might or might not raise? The DPP's office would know nothing of the circumstances here. In other words, the local garda is prosecuting a young woman for soliciting and the case either proceeds or not on the basis of the file. There may be no reference in it to the fact that the young woman has been trafficked. I made reference at the outset to the fact that I got an unexpected number of e-mails and contacts from a recent television programme about this betraying, I think, that most law abiding people who live busy lives have not focused much on this issue. They are quite shocked at the extent to which the problem has grown in recent years in the globalised world in which we live and especially where there is free movement from the new accession states and, indeed, free movement from Romania and Bulgaria, even if there is not a right to work here. The problem is bigger than what we might think. In those circumstances what would be the situation?

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