Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The implementation plan is ongoing, and I think this needs to be just part of that ongoing action. The final pieces of the legislation will be enacted before the end of summer. My objective, beyond that, is that we will be able to have a targeted, focused campaign. We have a budget coming up and we have to look at the available resources. However, every year since I have been in the Department, we have made sure that in the funding I have secured there has been funding to raise awareness on specific issues related to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, and this feeds into part of that. There is a space where we could work on that. We have been working with other organisations as well and there is a capacity to build up and support those organisations that are working on a daily basis to combat human trafficking, whether it is the IOM or Ruhama. We have done a body of work with Ruhama, investing in it around “We Don’t Buy It”, a specific campaign. It is now partnering with the GAA as well, which I worked with it on, as one of its charities this year, specifically looking at sexual exploitation and how we can educate the general population and encourage people not to exploit women. It is obviously already a crime to procure sex, but we want to highlight that these are vulnerable people and mainly people who have been trafficked.There is much more work that we, as a Government, and that this Department can do to run an annual campaign or to have something there that is consistent and for the general public. There is more we can and will do, working with those organisations to specifically target certain groups of people who we know are particularly vulnerable. I look forward to working with the Senator.