Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I congratulate my colleague, Senator Ó Murchú for raising a pertinent issue and speaking about it with his usual eloquence.

I rise to ask for a further debate on human trafficking in light of the disturbing new statistics available from Ruhama, which, as everybody here knows, does excellent work accompanying people involved in prostitution. Ruhama reports a two thirds increase in the number of referrals to it. People may not know that 90% of women in the sex industry are non-nationals and many of them are trafficked persons. Ruhama also reports dealing with a number of minors. One such minor in the sex industry was trafficked into the country at the age of 14. Since the enactment of the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act it is a crime to purchase the services of a trafficked person. However, we need further debate to see how we can tackle the demand as well as the supply. It is time to reopen the debate about following the Swedish model where it is a crime to purchase the services of a person in prostitution.

We also need to end the complacency within officialdom. A spokesperson for the Garda press office, who recently appeared on a TV3 documentary on trafficking, said that basically trafficking was not a big problem. He said they had not found evidence of significant levels of trafficking into this country for sexual exploitation. He said they had only found "snippets". Where is the Garda getting its statistics? Given that Operation Quest is confined to Dublin, where is the serious intent not just to find out about the extent of trafficking but also to tackle it? We need to end the complacency. We need to have a debate and we should start in this House. It should focus on the need to criminalise the users of persons in the sex industry so that we can tackle the demand as well as the supply and make this country a cold house for traffickers.