Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In the end I will disagree with the central proposal of Deputy Pringle's Bill. However, I commend him on raising the issue and allowing for discussion on it because it is the most serious of issues and needs to be debated. We need to do everything we can to reduce the pressure on young women and young men to go into prostitution where they are forced to sell their bodies and sexuality for money. It is abhorrent that people might be forced - in most cases are forced - into that situation. Obviously, given that this happens we need to do our utmost to ensure that people who are forced into that position have the safest possible conditions available to them and have as much protection as possible given the nature of what they are doing and the association with violence, criminality and the horrors of trafficking.

These are issues we must address as best we can. Ultimately, I disagree with the idea that criminalising the problem is a solution in any shape or form, whether the user or the sex workers themselves. I know Deputy Pringle does not suggest this. Criminalisation does not resolve the problem. Unfortunately, there are some things to which there is no easy solution because they are deeply complicated problems and if we look at prostitution, is this not obvious?

We have had prostitution not since the beginning of human society, but what is called modern civilisation, when it began in the great city states of Babylon and Egypt. What is clear is that where there is inequality, injustice and imbalances in power and social relations, and where there is exploitation and poverty, there is prostitution. It has always been this way. Overwhelmingly, the people who have been pushed into prostitution since it began are the poor, and not exclusively poor women as it is also affected poor men. The purchasers are almost always the wealthy, the powerful and the privileged. It may seem unachievable that we must do something in the short term to address the problem as it manifests itself, and it is a bit too pie in the sky to talk about addressing these deeper inequalities, but I must be honest and say history tells us unless we deal with the gross inequalities in wealth and power in society, we will not rid a society of prostitution, the buying and selling of sex, poor women and men being forced to sell themselves sexually or of the wealthy in society treating human bodies and sexuality as something they can buy.

If this has been a problem since the beginning of what is called modern civilised society, it has become an even bigger problem under capitalism. It is not very fashionable to speak about capitalism, but we must speak about it with regard to this issue. Prostitution, particularly the way it has expanded dramatically over the past 100 to 150 years, is one of the most obnoxious manifestations of the logic of the market because it is about buying and selling human sexuality for profit. It is the market. It is the dark underbelly of how a market works, because market economics are based on the principle that the way to allocate resources and organise an economy is on the basis of turning these things into commodities and buying and selling them for profit. Prostitution is the ultimate extension of this logic into the area of human bodies and human sexuality. At its most extreme form, which is street prostitution and human trafficking, it is horrendous, but there is a connection with the big multinationals, advertisers and corporations which sell products using sexuality as the means to package a product, an activity which is apparently respectable and which we see filling our television screens and so-called respectable magazines. Some people would argue we should ban this, but I do not believe banning this is the way forward either. It is a manifestation of how the market works. It has turned sex into a commodity, and turned women's bodies particularly into a commodity to be bought and sold and to be used to buy and sell things. This has deeply affected and alienated human sexuality in modern society because people from the youngest age and at every level in society are encouraged to see sexuality as a commodity to be bought and sold. Unless we address these issues, we will not deal with how human sexuality becomes distorted.

Unless we deal with the issues of poverty, unemployment and human misery which force people into prostitution, we simply will not touch the problem. While we can and should debate and dispute whether criminalisation is the way forward, it seems obvious that the bottom line is that people are driven overwhelmingly into prostitution because of poverty. There are, of course, exceptions, but if we look at the growth of prostitution in the country at present it is obvious the vast majority of prostitutes we are speaking out, who are advertised in the media and on the Internet, are immigrants from poor European and non-European countries. There is a direct connection. This is also true of human trafficking, and the horror of families selling their children into prostitution. It is horrendous that any family would consider doing this, but think about the economic circumstances which twist people's situation and thinking to the point they would consider selling their children into prostitution. This can only arise from the most extreme circumstances of desperation and social and economic dysfunction. We must address this problem of poverty and inequality for women, who are the primary victims, but, as I stated, it is not only women because young men are also affected.

I do not want to be too political about this and take political potshots, but frankly any government which introduces or passes measures which contribute to poverty has little credibility when speaking about prostitution. One of the shocking aspects of prostitution as it manifests now is the number of third level students who are driven into prostitution. They are not necessarily from terribly poor backgrounds, but because they are away from home in university where grants are insufficient, work is unavailable and they have registration fees and all the rest of it, many young third level students are dabbling in prostitution out of economic desperation. They are not willing to go back to their parents and state they have no money, or their parents simply do not have the money. Governments which make life more difficult for students by cutting their grants, introducing registration fees or by halving social welfare payments for young people between the ages of 18 and 24, are, I am afraid, contributing to the growth of prostitution and forcing more young people into it or into emigration. I hope many of primarily young people forced to leave this country find decent employment elsewhere, but there can be little doubt, because we know it is true historically, that with this level of emigration a proportion of the people driven to London, New York and elsewhere will be forced into something as horrendous as prostitution.

We must deal with those issues.

Some points have been made about the Swedish model but I will not elaborate on them further. However, there is no clear evidence for the claims that the criminalisation of the user, i.e. the Swedish model which is being proposed in this Bill, has halved prostitution. As Deputy Clare Daly has already said, the 2010 Skarhed report claimed that prostitution had been halved. However, the report's authors went on to admit that they never had statistics on prostitution levels before the introduction of criminalisation, nor did they have accurate figures afterwards, so there is no statistical data to back up the claim.

There is a widespread view, particularly among sex workers themselves in Sweden, that it has simply driven the issue underground. It has forced prostitutes out of areas where they might be safer, into more dangerous situations such as back lanes and other places without CCTV or public lighting. In addition, they are not carrying contraceptives in case the police stop them and use the possession of contraceptives as evidence of their being engaged in prostitution. We have gone through those points earlier.

The evidence is far from clear but, logically, it seems obvious to me that criminalisation cannot deal with the problem. We will have to examine the root causes. Some people think that regulating the sex industry to bring it into the formal economy is a panacea. While I would not argue that it is a panacea, the least worst of the available options is to have the industry properly regulated. In that way, sex workers can organise themselves in trade unions and minimise the dangers that prostitutes risk by having their profession regulated. It should be done in such as way as to minimise the risk, including threats, to those who are forced into that situation. Ultimately, we must deal with the root causes if we are to tackle this social evil. That is the way to go, rather than believing that criminalisation can solve the problem.

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