David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

What about the position of the sex workers? The material I have to hand is material I have not used before. It is new material that has come to me in recent days. Sex workers do not support this legislation. The majority of sex workers in sex worker-led organisations across the world, including those in Ireland, do not support the criminalisation of the purchase of sex. Many sex workers have spoken about the dangers and risks they face when this kind of legislation is introduced. In Canada, which also uses the Swedish model, increased police presence has decreased sex workers’ ability to use police for protection. Workers have to stay out for longer hours and in more clandestine locations. For example, Violet, a female sex worker, stated:

Because of being so cold and being harassed I got into a car where I normally wouldn’t have. [...] [H]e put something to my throat. And I had to do it for nothing.

This is the kind of circumstances we are leading to. A Norwegian female sex worker said:

If a customer is bad you need to manage it yourself to the end. You only call the police if you think you are going to die. If you call the police, you lose everything.

This is the evidence from the coalface. Research commissioned in 2014 by the Northern Ireland Department of Justice found that 98% of sex workers interviewed did not support the criminalisation of clients. Why are they not listened to?

On the question of trafficking and organised crime, any coercion or trafficking becomes more difficult to tackle under this legislation because it prevents disincentives to reporting abuse. To avoid being under police scrutiny and, therefore, risking the loss of income, housing and child custody, sex workers are less likely to report any abuse suffered.In a 2011 interview, a Swedish client recalled three separate occasions on which he had witnessed what he suspected was trafficking. He did not go through with the transaction and then did not report to the authorities for fear of legal consequences. This is the impact on trafficking and this is direct evidence from people involved in these transactions. Like Amnesty International, I am not advocating prostitution. I do not think it is an ideal way of life but I am interested in the welfare and protection of those who are involved in it, and their clients.

In Sweden, in 2010, the police board reported that serious organised crime including prostitution and trafficking had increased in strength, power and complexity over the past decade. There has simply been no concrete evidence produced in Sweden or elsewhere that criminalising the purchase of sex decreases the number of incidents of trafficking for sexual exploitation. I would like to hear that being challenged. Where is the effect of the legislation we are told of?

Ruhama has rubbished the claims of some of these women that it involved flexible working hours so that they could look after their children. The women feel that they are protected by the constitutional protection of the family. One of the single most significant factors compelling women into sex work is the need to make adequate provision for their children not only materially, but also physically, emotionally and psychologically. Even if they can find alternative work adequate to meeting the material needs of their families, they have no access to affordable child care of any kind let alone what would meet their other equally important needs. Even a street worker can make the equivalent of the minimum wage in a single evening, which not only represents a dramatic reduction in the hours of child-minding required, but also in the quality of care required to meet her children’s physical, emotional and psychological needs for such a short period of time when her children are likely to be sleeping. Many indoor sex workers are making more than the industrial wage in four or five days a month using full-time care for those days similar to respite care routinely provided for special needs children and devoting the rest of the time to their duties in their home.

Much is made in support of this amendment which is really a re-jigging of the original section. Much is made of the 800 submissions received by the Government but it does not say that it was inundated with signed hard copies of the turn off the red light form letter, some of which had not even bothered to delete instructions such as "put your name here". It is laughable. It is a circular letter.

I am a member of three trade unions and they have come out in support of this, but not one of them consulted me or any of their other members before throwing their support behind this legislation and this kind of amendment, which is the principal reason I oppose this Bill. There are many excellent things in it, the protection of children, protection of people with mental difficulties and so on and so forth, but this is a terrible amendment and a terrible situation in law. This Government, which has been progressive in so many allied areas, such as the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution. (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015, is making this disastrous jump backwards. I know the Bill will be forced through here tonight, either because we come to the end of the debate or because we are threatened with a guillotine, but it will then have to go to the Dáil and I strongly hope that there will be voices in the Dáil that will echo my lone voice in this Chamber.

The National Police Board of Sweden said in March 2010 serious organised crime including prostitution and trafficking has increased in strength power and complexity over the past decade. It constitutes a serious social problem in Sweden and organised crime makes large amounts of money from the exploitation and trafficking of people under slave like conditions. This is a decade and more after the legislation was passed.

A report commissioned by the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland stated:

Our findings suggest that there are no easy solutions to effectively regulate prostitution and tackle sex trafficking. For example, both the Swedish (neo-abolitionism) and the Dutch (regulationism) regimes appear to record continuous sex trafficking despite shared objectives to the contrary. [In other words, it just does not work.]

Given the complexity of the social and legal realities surrounding prostitution, there are significant problems with identifying causes and effects, i.e. it is not always clear if a policy measure – or some other variable – caused a specific change. [In other words, we do not know the sequence of cause and effect.] In regard to the Swedish approach all claims about pre and post law trends are challenged by the lack of sound figures for the sex industry prior to 1999 [when the legislation was introduced].

No firm conclusions can be drawn about the relationship between the sex purchase ban and patterns of sex trafficking into Sweden.

There is also no clear evidence on the relationship between the type of prostitution regime and the impact on the number of sex workers.

There is no information. What are we doing? In the absence of information, we are introducing these amendments. The purpose of these amendments, unlike the rest of the Bill, is to criminalise the purchase of sex, one side of a transaction. It is like criminalising the purchaser of a small amount of cannabis, leaving the drug pusher to go unscathed.