Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be opposing this Bill. I disagree very strongly with criminalising the purchase of consensual sex. If this Bill is successful, I believe it will signify the reinvolvement of the State in the private sexual lives of adult citizens for the first time since homosexuality was decriminalised over 20 years ago. It seems that the Turn Off the Red Light campaign has turned many heads. Many people seem to be impressed with it, but I am certainly not. Its logic is being applied at the expense of the testimony and first-hand experience of individual sex workers and international experience. I find it incredible that the voices of sex workers are not being listened to. I have listened to a number of women from Sex Workers Alliance Ireland on a number of occasions. I find their arguments impressive, articulate and rational. I wish everybody would listen to them for a while before they make up their minds. The logic of the Turn Off the Red Light campaign has been questioned and criticised by a large number of organisations, many of which recommend the decriminalisation model, including Human Rights Watch, UN Women, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, Amnesty and the International Labour Organization. When I attended a round-table discussion organised by Sex Workers Alliance Ireland a couple of days ago, it was pointed out that the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland, Pavee Point, the Union of Students in Ireland and some trade unions are against the criminalisation of the purchase of sex. In contrast to the rescue ethos of many religious-funded organisations, including Turn Off the Red Light, the migrant rights centre is organised along community development principles and has a strong track record on all forms of trafficking and exploitation of migrants.

According to a report published in 2010 by the former UN special rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover:

The trafficking and enforced sexual slavery of any person is abhorrent, and undoubtedly merits criminal prohibition. However, the conflation of consensual sex work and sex trafficking in such legislation leads to, at best, the implementation of inappropriate responses that fail to assist either of these groups in realizing their rights, and, at worst, to violence and oppression.

This confusion between prostitution and sex trafficking is a difficult starting point from which to develop a coherent policy framework or to draft responsible legislation. The logic of the Turn Off the Red Light campaign applies an economic supply-demand theory, which is used for price determination, to the elimination of prostitution and to the purchase of consensual adult sex, which the campaign openly aims to eradicate on unspecified grounds which appear to relate to sexual morality. The campaign is based on an assumption that criminalising the purchase of sex will result in a reduction in demand and thereby lessen the incidence of prostitution, taking it as a given that this is a legitimate policy objective. This shaky demand argument relating to prostitution is then stretched to apply to sex trafficking. Thankfully, this abhorrent crime is already illegal under the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008. The purchase of sex from a person who has been trafficked is also illegal under section 5 of that Act. I ask those who are making the case for this legislation to stop using these excuses.

Last year's use of emotive images of children by the Turn Off the Red Light campaign was particularly misleading, given that the proposed change will not make sex with a child any more illegal than it already is. A child does not have the mental capacity to consent to sex. Any adult who has sex with a child after this Bill is passed will be charged with statutory rape and not with the purchase of consensual sex from a prostitute. The law that this campaign proposes would have no effect on the fictional child characters used by Turn Off the Red Light as part of its promotional campaign. The supporters of this campaign appear to consider women in the same category as children in terms of their mental capacity to consent. They dismiss the insistence of some sex workers that they freely enter these arrangements with the sweeping generalisation that no woman would ever choose to engage in sex work. That is not a fair argument. The apparent success of the Swedish model, which is often trotted out as justification for the demand hypothesis, has long since been diminished and more recently has been disproved by various studies. The 2011 report of the UN AIDS advisory group strongly criticises the Swedish demand model as "ignoring the voices of sex workers". The rejection of the laws advocated by the Turn Off the Red Light campaign in by Scotland, Denmark, Finland and the French Senate seems to have gone unnoticed.

Last year, the Northern Ireland Minister of Justice commissioned independent research from Queen's University, which dismissed the Swedish model and found agreement among sex workers and the PSNI that criminalising the purchase of sex would drive prostitution underground, endanger the lives and health of sex workers, including a significant male transgender minority, increase the involvement of organised crime, increase the social stigma of sex workers and divert police resources away from sex-trafficking investigations.

Only 7% of clients said they would be permanently deterred by the proposed criminalisation. Unfortunately, neither the justice committee nor the Minister see fit to follow this approach based on evidence-led policy development and no similar research has been commissioned in Ireland. Why not commission such research? Would it not be interesting to see what we might learn? The PSNI expressed serious concerns about the operation and enforcement of that legislation. The same concerns are also relevant here, since the covert surveillance methods used by Swedish police are unlikely to be available to An Garda Síochána. This leaves gardaí with the prospect of hiding in the bushes and wardrobes, as they did when tasked with the enforcement of the criminal offence of homosexuality.

The Turn Off The Red Light campaign reduces complex issues to a single soundbite solution which, we are told, will end trafficking. A more considered approach might include tackling the wider structural inequalities in society and providing a real alternative to those seeking to leave prostitution. Many want to leave. It would suit the State better if we made it possible for them to leave the industry. We create so many problems for marginalised people in society and we do little to address these problems in many cases. We could do far more for people who may be caught in prostitution and who wish to get out if we took a more holistic view and started looking at where the problems are for these people. The right to work could be provided to asylum seekers, given that migrant women are identified as vulnerable. It is crucial that the validity of the voices of the many sex workers who insist they have freely chosen sex work be recognised. It would also be positive if consideration was given to the New Zealand model of decriminalisation. Whether the subject is abortion or prostitution, symbolic legislation on grounds of either religious or sexual morality amounts to a folly and the State should not indulge in it, especially when the cost is the safety and health of the women involved. Any proposed legislation must respect a woman's rights to bodily integrity and autonomy.

A citizen's right to a private life, including a private sexual life, must also be protected, as recognised by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. A challenge initiated by Senator David Norris in 1988 succeeded on Article 8 grounds when the European Court of Human Rights held that the mere existence of legislation criminalising homosexuality amounted to an unacceptable interference by the State into his private life. The current proposals to criminalise the purchase of consensual adult sex would appear to be vulnerable on similar grounds.

I went to a round-table discussion recently and noted some points made by some of the people from the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland. These simple points were made in the course of trying to make an argument and have their voices heard. These women are flabbergasted that they are not being given a voice. I will set out some of the points they made. I have numerous points and I have marked off and picked out some of them. Sex workers are seriously at risk of human rights abuses. They are at risk of rape and violence as well as bribery at the hands of police. The start and end point is that the human rights of sex workers must be respected. The State has a role to ensure those who do not want to enter sex work should be protected from same. That should be the primary role of the State in this regard.

Education and employment opportunities should be considered. The State is obliged to provide a safety net in order that those who do not want to be engaged in prostitution do not have to be. Criminalisation of the purchase of sex will compromise sex workers with police. Human rights abuses are compounded by the legislative framework. Criminalising the purchase of sex is more focused on the nuisance element rather than the rights of the individual. There is no distinction between those doing the exploiting and the sex worker. One thing is for sure, if this law comes in, it is going to make life far tougher for the sex worker than the exploiter.

Norway brought in legislation in this area and research has been undertaken into how it is working out. There has been some comment on the research. Evicting sex workers from premises makes them homeless. Landlords who knowingly rent apartments to sex workers are accused of being promoters. The legislation in question has led to increased enforcement against all aspects of sex work. No other group in society is subject to the same level of scrutiny and high-level surveillance as sex workers.

How do the police find buyers of sex? They monitor the sex workers, further infringing the rights and liberties of the sex worker. Sex workers only go to the police as a last resort, making it almost impossible to report violence. A sex worker can lose her home if she goes to the police. She can be deported. She can be targeted, discriminated against or abused. Sex workers are forced to go to the homes of buyers as police monitor the workers to find the buyers. There is a greater likelihood of violence as a result. If the sex worker has to go to the home of the buyer, she is more likely to be at risk of violence. Police are using immigration laws against sex workers. Prosecutions against traffickers have not increased in Norway through the process. The impact on sex workers is not taken into consideration. The impact on sex workers is seen as collateral damage, a little like the 2 million people killed by the US bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to the present day. Those 2 million people were not carrying guns. They were deemed to be collateral damage.

The sex workers say it is a choice for many. They say they are not helped by criminalisation. A realisation of their rights is what will help them. They know their own minds. For politicians to suggest to them because of the career they might have chosen that they do not know their own minds is insulting, dishonest and irrational. If all sex work involves rape and violence, why is there only a monetary fine to penalise it? A person can be thrown in jail for stealing a pair of shoes but is fined for purchasing the services of a sex worker. It is impossible for sex workers to retain a home when landlords are obliged to evict them. When sex work is criminalised, the marginalised suffer most. People who are more affluent can navigate the laws much better. If a sex worker goes into a hotel to meet a client and she is dressed to the nines and is white, she will probably get past the reception desk. If she is Nigerian and black, however, she might not find that quite so easy. That is the truth. How do the people in the hotel determine whether someone is or is not a sex worker? They profile; that is human nature.

In Norway today, sex workers carry fewer condoms as police use the presence of condoms to build a case against a sex worker. Is that not mad? In Ireland, the presence of condoms is being, and has been, used to build a case and women are starting to hide condoms in their bras where they are likely to get sweaty and less effective. The United Nations, UN, has slammed Ireland for lack of sex education in schools - I think that was last January. In introducing legislation to ban the purchase of sex, the Government seems to think that its primary aim is to vindicate the human rights of trafficked persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation. According to Amnesty International, decriminalisation, not criminalisation, would help reduce trafficking as it would allow sex workers to work together and demand their rights, leading to better working conditions and greater oversight of commercial sex and the potential trafficking within it.

The Nordic model, which this Government is wholeheartedly embracing, aims to stop prostitution by reducing demand through the criminalisation of the purchase of sex. However, research carried out by the New York Urban Justice Centre working group on sex work and human rights finds it is not the number of customers but economic trends and social conditions, such as unemployment and a shortage of living wage opportunities, that determine the number of sex workers at any given time. Research carried out by the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, which I touched on earlier, into prostitution in Northern Ireland in 2014 found that only 7% of clients said they would stop paying for sex if it was criminalised. A total of 36% of clients surveyed thought the purchase of sex was already illegal. Although the Nordic model is often trotted out as an example of best practice, the reality for sex workers is that it led to an increase in street work, left many sex workers under greater threat of eviction as their landlords can be prosecuted if they collect money earned from the sale of sex and the stigma created by this new law has even been used to strip sex workers of parental rights. One sex worker told Amnesty International that if a customer is bad, she needs to manage it herself to the end. A sex worker only calls the police if she thinks she is going to die. If she calls the police, she loses everything.

Data published by EUROSTAT found that, between 2010 and 2012, the German per capitarate of trafficking was lower than that of Sweden and prostitution is legal in Germany. The Northern Ireland study found that members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, PSNI, admitted that a sex purchase ban would be difficult to enforce and largely ineffective in reducing levels of trafficking in sexual exploitation. I would have thought that the Department of Justice and Equality might think that our gardaí have enough work to do. They are probably under-resourced and do not have enough numbers and could do without this extra work.

This Bill is being introduced without taking into account what sex workers or their representative organisations say. The 2014 study of prostitution in Northern Ireland found that 98% of the 171 sex workers surveyed did not support the criminalisation of the purchase of sex. When the Egyptians rigged the election in their military takeover in 2013, when they threw out the Muslim Brotherhood guy, they did not even rig it for 98%; they had 96%. The fact that the sex workers were ignored by the Northern Ireland Assembly and that groups such as Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, are being ignored in this legislation shows that the moralistic patronising attitude which has shaped much of Ireland’s response to so-called moral issues is alive and well. Instead of moral judgment, we should be taking the most effective harm reduction approach. Criminalisation will only exacerbate any possible problems. Sex worker organisations around the globe are calling for a decriminalisation model along the lines of the one introduced in New Zealand in 2003. Sex Workers Alliance Ireland and the Global Alliance against Trafficking in Women recognise decriminalisation as being more in the interests of sex workers than the legislation model adopted in Germany and the Netherlands.

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