Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Okay, her committee's report. She was the chief spokesperson for it and should not be so modest. I know there are people who passionately believe that the solution to the problem is stopping the demand for prostitution and hitting the purchaser rather than the supplier of sex for money. I know there are people who passionately believe that but they are wrong. The oldest profession will not be suppressed by this. It will just be driven underground, sideways and every which way but it will not be suppressed. Prostitution will not end as a result of this legislation but criminalisation of vulnerable people will begin.

I would say that most people, whether male or female, who avail of the services of prostitutes are inadequates of one kind or another. They are lonely people for the most part. They are people who do not have relations with others for the most part. There may be exceptions and there may be people who have huge fortunes, happy families, devoted spouses and so forth who engage prostitutes, but for the most part, those who are customers of prostitutes are inadequate people, in my view. It is morally wrong in principle and morally reprehensible to say that such people, if caught, will be brought before the courts and socially disgraced. That is simply wrong and it is not the way to deal with this problem. If one regards prostitution as a problem, then this is not the way to deal with it. The pimps are being given a new weapon against the customers of their prostitutes. Where pimping is involved, which is not always the case, the subservient prostitutes will now be in a position to blackmail and steal from customers because those customers, if they go to An Garda Síochána to report the theft of a wallet, for example, will end up in the District Court trying to argue that they did not commit an offence. That is the brave new world, the glorious new future, that is painted here.

This has never been adequately debated in these Houses. This House, at 8 p.m. with a guillotine at 9 p.m., is getting an opportunity to consider this offence. It has not been adequately debated. While it has been debated previously, it has not been adequately debated. A different Seanad, 80% of whose Members are not here now, considered this legislation before. It has not been properly considered by this House as currently constituted. This is a disastrous mistake. Who will take the moral responsibility when the blackmailing first comes to light? Will everyone say that they were warned about that but ignored the warning because they thought there was a greater good to be achieved? When the first woman who brought a male escort home is convicted before the District Court and ruined, even though that escort blackmailed or stole from her, who in this House will say that they voted for that, thought it was a good idea and is glad they did it? Nobody will. It is a shameful proposal. The law has never said that an act of prostitution was criminal, per se. Now, for the first time, this puritanical world is about to say that it should be. If I had a particular fetish, which I do not think I have, and paid a person to come to my house and gratify me by engaging in a sexual fetish with me, I do not see why I should be liable, if that person grasses on me, to be brought before a court. Are we liberals or what are we? What about the human right of privacy? What about the right to engage in this behaviour if one wants?Why should a male escort not be paid by a woman for sexual services? It is their private business. What right has the State to suddenly say that if we discover that a man or woman has done this, we will drag him or her before our courts, ruin him or her socially and punish him or her in the eyes of the public? There is no moral entitlement to do so. It is a shameful proposal. It is indefensible in moral terms. It is all being done on the back of trafficking, pimping, etc. That is the excuse for this measure. That is what has created the leverage to bring the proposal this far and to the 11th hour and 59th minute of becoming law. No-one can tell us that prostitution will decline as result of this measure. No-one can tell us that the demand for sexual services will change because of this legislation. I can guarantee that it will change in one respect. It will go underground and become more evil and more dominated by the pimps. The single prostitute woman, single male escort or single rent boy operating on his or her own will be driven into the hands of pimps on foot of this new order.

I wish to make a second point. I spoke to the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality today. Normally, I would never say anything that was said in the Members' bar but she did say to me that she did not agree with the point I had made in The Sunday Business Postto the effect that, under the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act, a prostitute who offers her services and takes money from a customer would aid and abet the commission of that person's offence. I do not understand on what basis she says that is not the case. If the Tánaiste wants to explain it me, then I want a detailed explanation and not just a comment to the effect that the Attorney General does not think so. I want to hear why the Attorney General does not think so because we are making the law here and she is over there, I think.

Section 22 of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act provides that any person who aids and abets the commission of a summary offence is liable to be punished as if he or she were the principal offender. We must ask ourselves why that does not apply. If I am right about this point, and I would be glad to be corrected in one sense, then the purpose of today's legislation, which is to decriminalise the prostitute and criminalise the customer, would be defeated completely.

As Senator Bacik will know, normally when somebody is prosecuted for a criminal offence the evidence of an accomplice - or an aider and abetter - is not usually receivable against them except with serious warnings. Accomplice evidence is suspect evidence and very much so because of the risk of blackmail. Let us say that Senator Boyhan and I robbed a bank and he turned State's evidence against me. In such circumstances, the law would doubt his evidence because it would be accomplice evidence. I cannot see for the life of me understand how a prostitute who avails of this new liberty, approaches a man on the street, offers her or his services to that person and gets paid for having sex in a hotel, house or wherever else, does not aid and abet the commission of that offence or how he or she is not an accomplice to it. I do not want to be told that the Director of Public Prosecutions may not prosecute. Why should the DPP not prosecute? Who is the more morally culpable? Is it the 18-year old boy from Kerry who has travelled to Dublin for an All-Ireland final or the 30-year old prostitute who has spent all day soliciting customers in central city bars and streets? I do not understand the provision at all. I am against the proposal. It is a big mistake. I do not care what happened in Sweden. We have to make laws for our society. Scandinavia is not the greatest happy place in the world. People say that Sweden does this, that and the other. Northern Ireland has done this, this and the other but it has not got a single conviction in two years and, as we know, prostitution is still rampant in Belfast. What useful purpose except an ideological goal is served by this legislation? I shall finish because I presume that other Senators want to contribute.