Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Ruane for raising this important matter. Part 4 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 provided for two new offences: paying for sexual activity with a prostitute, and paying for sexual activity with a trafficked person. The Act also removes those who offer their services as a prostitute from the existing offences of soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. A fundamental focus in the introduction to this legislation was to ensure that women working in the prostitution sector would have increased protection and face no repercussions for reporting crimes related to their work. Senator Ruane will be aware that Part 4 of the 2017 Act specifies that not later than three years after its commencement, the Minister for Justice and Equality shall cause a report to be prepared on the operation of section 7A of the Act and cause this report to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas. As the Act was commenced in March 2017, review of Part 4 will formally commence in early 2020 after three years of its operation.

I appreciate the wide interest which there may be in the matter of this review. My Department is at present undertaking the groundwork for the preparation of this report, including to the funding of relevant research.My Department will also seek submissions from interested parties when the review commences. Indeed, Senator Ruane has raised a number of questions. By way of reply at this stage, more detailed information on the approach to be adopted, including the means for consultation with stakeholders, will be announced when it is available, and the report when complete will also be published in due course. Senator Ruane may be interested to hear of the two research projects being funded under the Dormant Accounts Fund, which we anticipate will feed into the review of the Act.

The first project is by the Sexual Exploitation Research Project, which is under the school of social policy, social work and social justice at UCD. That aims to provide empirical data on the experience of women in the commercial sex trade and the response of the criminal justice system in the context of the new law. This project draws significantly on information held by the HSE anti-human trafficking team and work already done under an earlier but much smaller joint research project during 2018, carried out by the HSE and the anti-human trafficking unit of my Department.

The second project is by Gender, Orientation, Sexual Health and HIV, GOSHH, which is a charity based in Limerick city. The project aims to explore the current level of awareness and know-how about the criminalisation of purchasing sex legislation among survival sex workers. It also aims to design an evidence-based ethical approach to research and working with survival sex workers.

Senator Ruane will also be aware of the second National Strategy in Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence 2016-2021. As Members of the House will be aware, the strategy is a whole-of-Government response to domestic and sexual violence and contains a range of actions to be implemented by Government departments and agencies and includes a monitoring committee, including membership from the non-governmental organisation sector. I anticipate as the review gets under way and as it proceeds, the monitoring committee will be centrally involved in overseeing its progress and examining its recommendations.

Indeed, more generally, I take this opportunity to note that as part of the transformation programme in my Department over the past year, a new criminal justice policy function has been created. Within this function, a community safety applied policy unit has been established with responsibility for policy on the full range of issues that relate to victims and community safety matters within the criminal justice system. The pulling together of all matters relating to victims, including human trafficking, sexual violence and support for witnesses within trials will ensure that dedicated time and space will be available to enable complex issues such as this to be appropriately examined, ultimately leading to a more robust and evidence-based policy in this and other fields that best protect the position of victims, including vulnerable women as has been evidenced by the contribution of Senator Ruane.