David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am a member of three unions and I was never consulted. Not a single trade union consulted its general membership about this. This is the strength of it. It was a PR campaign railroaded through.

The Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality had a jaunt to Sweden, and while it was there, the Swedish forum for human rights confirmed the trafficking of more than 166 children between 2008 and 2011 - hello, is anybody listening? - and confirmed the loss of 438 immigrant children in 2011 alone. On the final day, sex workers were graciously permitted in but no transcript of this was made publicly available. Neither of the two sex workers, whose appearance at the very end of the meeting was sheer tokenism, requested their testimony to be excluded from the transcript, but the decision was made not to record their views. How balanced is this?

I wish to put on record of the House a report from the press agency of the Rikspolisstyrelsen, which is the Swedish national police board. It has stated that serious organised crime, including prostitution and trafficking, has increased in strength, power and complexity over the past decade, that it constitutes a serious social problem for Sweden and that organised crime makes large sums of money out of it. Why, when it was considering this, did the Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality neglect to examine a variety of social models and concentrate exclusively on the Swedish model? Why did it refuse specifically to liaise with the New Zealand authorities and the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective, despite the well-publicised success of full decriminalisation? Why did it refuse to invite the Swedish sex workers who expressed great dissatisfaction with the social model? At the Dublin conference in October, Pye Jakobsson of the Swedish Rose Alliance spoke about the serious and various negative consequences experienced by sex workers under the Swedish model. Why did the delegation which visited Sweden in November refuse to meet the Swedish Rose Alliance? I have referred to the fact Deputy Stanton put on his Facebook page a declaration about the situation before the committee had heard any evidence whatever.

In 2007, eight years after the law was implemented, the Government of Sweden conceded, according to an official Swedish Government document, that it cannot give an unambiguous answer to the question on whether prostitution has increased or decreased. That is an interesting comment from the Swedish Government. Reporting from 2008 to 2010 showed an increase of trafficking in Sweden of 106%. Reported cases of sexual services sold went up by 569%. This is hardly a great tribute to the success of the Bill. A paper in The Lancetin July 2014 stated full decriminalisation would inhibit HIV transmission by up to 40%. Is nobody listening to these things? Is nobody concerned about the spread of disease? It is all very well to be comfortably ensconced here in our little middle-class environment and prate about life on the streets when very few people have real experience of it.

Amnesty International is a highly reputable body of international reputation. One in Four was instanced by the Minister of State as supporting it, and perhaps it is, but the founder of One in Four is the director of Amnesty International, which has fully endorsed the report. This should tell us something about diversity of view. There are all kinds of sensational charges laid about Amnesty International and against anybody who speaks out on behalf of this vulnerable minority.

As I pointed out, 98% of prostitutes are against it, but 80% of the voters in Northern Ireland are in favour of it. This is why we have the unusual alliance between provisional Sinn Féin-IRA on the one hand and the Roman Catholic hierarchy on the other, together with the Paisleyite Protestants. It is an interesting alliance.

Amnesty International does not endorse or encourage sex work. It takes no position on this and is solely concerned with the protection of sex workers' human rights. Neither is Amnesty International's approach advocating any right to buy sex. Amnesty International states the moves to criminalise the purchase of sex run counter to increasing evidence that such an approach puts sex workers at risk and leads to human rights violations. This is Amnesty International stating it puts people at risk and leads to human rights violations, not a trade union or the Irish Countrywomen's Association, but the principal body dealing with human rights in this country.