Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Roughly speaking, we can talk about three categories of people who will be affected by this legislation, the first of which comprises those who avail of so-called sexual services by purchasing them. Those who provide such services fall into the other two categories. Everybody agrees that pimps and controllers, who comprise the second category, should be criminalised and they will continue to be criminalised under this Bill. If we are to examine with honesty the vulnerability of the third category - those who supply the service themselves, often in circumstances of extreme vulnerability - we have to look beyond the simple issue of consent in the moment. People often come to prostitution against a background of sexual abuse, familial abuse, drug abuse, severe financial deprivation and human desperation. The proposed law seeks to recognise the context in which prostitution takes place in our society and to lessen the evil. I found myself in disagreement with Senator McDowell when he said that while he would be concerned to hear whether prostitution had come to an end in Northern Ireland, he did not want to hear about the experience in Sweden. I disagree with him because there is a need to look at the evidence. The evidence we are looking for is not the elimination of crime. Laws against crime reduce crime, but they never eliminate it. I have been trying to make this point for years in the context of the eighth amendment of the Constitution. People tell us that abortions go on anyway, which is something we know. All sorts of other tragic events happen. Sometimes the law brings down the incidence of the problem. I happen to believe that is true in the case of criminalising the purchaser of sexual services. It will help to make this country a colder house for traffickers. I think we need to rediscover some of the words that were at the heart of the address made to the UN General Assembly by the new UN Secretary General, António Guterres, but which have not been mentioned during this evening's debate. I refer to the concept of human dignity.