Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was not one bit disturbed by Senator McDowell’s comments. I commend him for making his case with passion and to the best of his considerable abilities. I listened carefully to what he said and read his article in The Sunday Business Post. In fact, he made his case so well, he almost convinced me on occasions. What I do not like, however, is the parliamentary trolling that goes on when people sense they have someone in the minority and they will seize the high moral ground.There was a very unpleasant tone of that in this Chamber tonight. New Senators who were elected or appointed to this House for the first time last year should consider that without Senator McDowell's initiative, they would have not had a chance to comment at such length on this important legislation.

I am very glad to see this day. I am pleased this legislation is before the House. I commend the various Deputies and Senators who were involved in considering it at the justice committee over recent years. I am thinking in particular of the current Minister, Deputy Zappone, and Senator Bacik. I will take a little credit by mentioning that I was probably the first person in this House to push strongly on this issue. Since I was first elected to the Seanad in 2007, I have listened carefully to the arguments made by real heroes like those involved with Ruhama, who go out onto the streets to work with women, in particular, who are involved in prostitution and to offer them support, advice and assistance. They see this issue with great passion and through the lens of their deep experience about what prostitution involves in our society. The encouragement I took from such people inspired me to propose amendments to the human trafficking legislation to seek to criminalise purchasers of sexual services. However, the political establishment was not with me at the time. Government Ministers told me laughingly in the corridors that students were making pocket money out of this industry. I was made to feel like I was a troubled little nanny. The reality is that people's views and values on this issue have shifted. We have seen an expansion in various countries of the legislative model that was led by Sweden. It is now being adopted in other countries, as Senator Bacik has pointed out.

I still think there is a lot of philosophical incoherence on this issue, even among those who support the model of criminalising the purchaser of sexual services. Those who are talking about issues like power relationships and gender equality, which are important in themselves, are not actually getting to the nub of the issue. Part of the problem these days is that we do not get back to basics by asking ourselves what law is about. Law is about promoting and protecting the common good and seeking to protect vulnerable people, in particular. It is about doing enough to achieve those goals, but not doing too much so that we end up unnecessarily encroaching on human freedom. The law always has to strike a balance between the promotion of the common good and the protection of human freedom. That is why all of us here, including myself as the first and perhaps the strongest advocate of the criminalisation of the user, have to listen with respect in the first instance to what Senator McDowell has to say. There are potential anomalies, contradictions and difficulties that have be reconciled. We cannot scoff at his example and say it is too extreme. We need to consider whether this potential downside of the legislation is justified by the good we are seeking to achieve. It seems to me that this would be a much more genteel and logical approach to the legislation before the House this evening.