Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

The following is an account from a young trafficked woman who was lucky enough to be rescued by the Garda and to get treatment from a non-governmental organisation in this country. It is an appropriate setting of the scene for a debate which I thank Deputy Naughten for introducing in the House.

I came to Ireland for a better life, trusting my helper. A few days later I became a prisoner. I was locked in a room. They were using me to make money. I was forced to have sex with different men, which was organised by them. After sleeping with the men, they paid money to my organisers who came to collect it from me. I became useless, meaningless, helpless, hopeless - no person to speak to. My world was turned upside down. No freedom. I have to do what they say to do, not what I want to do. It was like hell. I was dying in silence.

There is a danger when one passes legislation and puts a trafficking plan in place for one to think the job is done, but it is not. The problem of human trafficking in this country remains a growing one. Credit is due to the Government for the legislative response that came into effect in June 2008 and also for the trafficking plan that was published this summer. There is an onus on us to assess the performance of the legislation since its introduction, how it has been implemented, who is implementing it and, most importantly, whether we are finding and protecting the victims of human trafficking in this country.

Tough prosecution is secondary in that regard. We must find, target and prosecute those responsible for facilitating and organising the trafficking of people. Approximately four years ago it began to dawn on policymakers in this country that human trafficking was a real and growing issue. At the time this country was booming. We were a land of opportunity, but we were also a new target for organised crime to deliver a product, primarily young girls, into a growing sex industry. Prosperity brought problems and we did not deal with them initially. We are trying to do so now. The sex and prostitution industry in this country has changed dramatically in the past ten years. It has gone from the streets where primarily young and middle-aged Irish women worked to being conducted behind closed doors. Currently, 97% of the women involved are non-Irish nationals. Some of them do not even speak our language.

Two "Primetime" programmes and one "Panorama" programme identified the problem as a growing issue in this country. In the case of the BBC programme, Ireland was identified as a transit country, the easiest way to take young girls into the sex industry in Great Britain. I was in the European Parliament at the time the programme was aired and I tried to focus on the responses needed to address the issue. I was involved in the Stop the Traffik campaign that was launched in 2006.

It is worth reminding people of the extent of the problem the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform faces. This is a very large global criminal industry. The facts are startling. Approximately 2.5 million people are in forced labour at any one time around the world as a result of trafficking. Just under 300,000 people are in forced labour in the industrialised world as a result of trafficking - about 11% of that 2.5 million. People are trafficked from approximately 127 different countries and approximately 137 countries are exploiting the victims. Ireland is one of those. The majority of people are between the ages of 18 and 24 and in Ireland's case the majority are young women.

What is most startling is the profits generated through this criminal industry. The estimated global annual profits made from the exploitation of trafficked forced labour is €31.6 billion each year. That is a figure given by the International Labour Office in Geneva in 2005; I expect the figure has greatly increased since then. It is €15.5 billion in industrialised countries. That is almost half the total figure. This is a very large business which involves sophisticated, well organised, ruthless and well-financed criminal gangs targeting countries for a reason and the response we develop must take that into account. It is not surprising, therefore, that a small, open country like Ireland has been targeted. This motion acknowledges that over 100 women and girls have been clearly identified as being trafficked between 2007 and 2008, but anyone who knows anything about this issue knows that is only the tip of the iceberg.

In terms of whether we are doing enough, this motion proposes four actions that develop what the Minister has already done in Government: improve the effect of the legislation; improve the policy to date; protect young women; and target traffickers. I sincerely hope the Minister accepts this motion.

The first issue I want to discuss, and Deputy Naughten raised it, is the need to move the focus away from the Garda National Immigration Bureau to the Garda organised crime unit. We must break the connection between illegal immigration and trafficking into Ireland. One involves primarily people coming to Ireland to work and develop a better life here, and they are breaking the rules in doing it in some cases. The other is a criminal act whereby the smuggling arrangements are organised to exploit and abuse a victim.

The problem, if the two are not separated, is that they get lumped into the one and in terms of gardaí who are trained to identify on a daily basis people coming to Ireland illegally with fraudulent papers, passports or whatever, that type of training does not equip them to identify likely trafficked victims and treat them appropriately as victims of abuse and exploitation. Essentially, that is the problem with the current system.

Since the legislation was enacted last summer, we have had examples of women being arrested, handcuffed, treated with suspicion and put in jail cells as a result of a court judgment while the assessment procedure was ongoing as to whether the person should be categorised as a trafficked victim. That is not acceptable. We must recognise that the implementation of the law is not as it should be. We should not treat people as criminals and put the onus on them to prove that they are trafficked victims. It should be the other way around. We must be big enough to accept that gardaí alone are not the appropriate decision makers in terms of interpreting whether someone is a likely victim of trafficking.

Various expert groups in Ireland have proven themselves through experience and working with trafficked victims and victims of the sex industry. They know what they are looking for, and the criteria is clear in terms of United Nations protocols in this area. They should be involved in the determination process at an early stage with the gardaí to try to separate victims as early as possible to ensure that we can help them, rather than trying to establish whether someone is a victim of trafficking in the intimidating atmosphere of a Garda station or a jail cell. In many cases, those women will not trust police services or the gardaí because of past experience in their home countries. The method of determining who needs assistance when an illegal immigrant comes to the attention of the Garda Síochána is wrong.

I understand what the Minister was trying to achieve in the new trafficking law when he made assistance conditional on co-operating with the gardaí to try to help them secure convictions, but that is not taking a human rights approach. If somebody is a victim of rape, physical abuse or exploitation in a kitchen, the first priority must be to help that person understand how he or she got into that position and build faith and trust between the social and health services that we can provide to them here and the victims themselves. The first priority should not be securing a conviction of the person who brought them here. That should be secondary, but it is not in the current legislation. Nor is it in the current approach, and that is wrong. We should recognise that and change it.

Regarding the recovery and reflection period, I agree with Deputy Naughten. We must extend that, and be seen to extend it. People are not asking for permanent residency in Ireland. The groups campaigning for immigrant rights and the rights of victims of trafficking are not asking for that. They are asking for a longer period to ensure that the proper assessment can be done and the proper health care provided, whether that be emotional, physical or whatever the case may be.

We must separate the accommodation of asylum seekers or refugees from where we accommodate victims. The image we must have in our minds is that of a young Irish girl who has been found in a brothel, in an extreme case maybe handcuffed to a bed, who has been earning money for a pimp or a brothel owner. If we cannot find her parents, do we send that young Irish girl to a migrant centre or to an asylum seeking accommodation unit? If she is a Nigerian, Malaysian or Brazilian girl, or a street girl from Calcutta, she should have the same rights as an Irish girl, or an Irish young woman, in this country if she is found to be a victim of abuse and exploitation. That is the way we should see it.

The only way we will make a serious impact on this industry is to target demand. That is the reason I want the Minister to take seriously our final proposal that we will re-examine prostitution laws and laws around the sex industry in Ireland. I have no qualms about saying that people who use prostitution in Ireland should be criminalised. It is the only way to target and kill demand. It will never be entirely eradicated but if we are serious about helping people who find themselves in prostitution, whether they be trafficked here or in prostitution because of drug addition or a series of other complicated reasons, we must target the people who use them, pay for them and consider that normal living. If we are serious about helping those people, we must target those who use them and pay for them, those who consider that to be normal living.

Until we target our prostitution laws in the same way that has been successfully done in Scandinavian countries and in the same way that is being considered in Britain, we will not make an impact on this industry. The first priority should not be prosecutions, but the protection of victims. We will find that if we protect victims properly, the prosecutions will flow from that because we will build proper trust between the State agencies and the victims we have an obligation to help.

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