Gardaí visited 166 brothels and interviewed more than 250 people described as “sex workers” as part of an international crackdown on sex trafficking, according to a recent report in The Irish Times. The report quoted gardaí as stating that they had detected no victims of sex trafficking during the operation. But they nonetheless appealed for anyone with relevant information to come forward. The interviewed sex workers were provided with information and advice should they wish to speak further to gardaí.

In 2017, the Oireachtas enacted the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, for the first time criminalising any payment for sexual services. The 2017 Act, however, makes clear that people providing paid prostitution commit no offence at all.

To recapitulate, selling sexual activity is not illegal. Individual women who engage in prostitution commit no offence. Female prostitution is not criminal. Sex between men – and, by extension, prostitution involving men – was a serious criminal offence in Ireland from the 1880s until the 1990s, when minister for justice Máire Geoghegan-Quinn repealed criminalisation of sex between consenting male adults.

Thus, a man who pays for the sexual services of a woman, or a woman or a man who pays for the sexual services of a male “escort”, commits a criminal offence and is liable to arrest and public prosecution.

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© The Irish Times