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a serious criminal offence in Ireland from the 1880s until the 1990s, when minister for justice Máire Geoghegan-Quinn repealed criminalisation of sex between consenting male adults.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.
That there were 166 brothels in operation easily available for Garda inspection demonstrates beyond contradiction that the 2017 legislation is ineffective. That 269 sex workers (presumably overwhelmingly female) were interviewed by gardaí in brothels without any evidence of sex trafficking being disclosed underlines the futility of the 2017 Act insofar as it criminalised all payment for sex.
I was one of a small number of Oireachtas members who spoke against Section 7A enacted by the 2017 Act on the basis that it was likely to be ineffectual and give rise to opportunities for blackmail and extortion.
It is, of course, and always has been, a criminal offence to operate a brothel or to live on the proceeds of others’ prostitution. The recent Garda initiative included a sting operation in the Limerick region, which resulted in the arrest of a man in his 50s and the seizure of €840,000 in cash. The report in this newspaper recounted that the arrested man had appeared before Limerick District Court and was remanded on bail. He was not named for some reason.
From 2017 to 2024, the Director of Public Prosecutions directed 161 prosecutions against individuals accused of paying for sex – all believed to be male. In the same period, there were just 15 convictions.
In 2025 Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan published a review of the operation of the 2017 Act. That detailed review of the 2017 legislation highlighted contradictions between those who favour legalising brothels in the interests of the safety and welfare of sex workers and those, on the other hand, who seek to continue to criminalise any patrons of brothels.
There does seem to be a fundamental gulf in attitudes in respect of the proliferation of brothels operating relatively openly since 2017. If you are content to describe prostitutes as “sex workers”, how and where are they to earn an income? If those engaged in prostitution feel safer and more protected working in brothels than on their own, does it make sense to criminalise such behaviour?
If brothels were legalised, would they have to be operated as co-operatives managed by the sex workers themselves to eliminate potential for exploitation?
These are not easy issues. But we cannot ignore the fact that there is a lot of money to be made from prostitution and that the legal twilight world we have created suits the purposes of unscrupulous figures who pursue wealth by exploiting the weakness of women described as sex workers.
Would legalisation of brothel-keeping and decriminalisation of payment for sex improve or disimprove the welfare and safety of those 269 women interviewed by gardaí at the 166 brothels visited in the course of the recent operation?
On the basis of the published figures, the successful conviction of just 15, presumably male, people in nearly a decade of operation of the 2017 Act strongly suggests that the law is not working.
City dwellers and those living in many larger towns will be aware of premises offering massage services. Nobody knows what percentage of such premises – if any – may be brothels hiding in plain sight.
One suspects that gardaí interviewing 269 sex workers operating in 166 brothels without detecting any sex trafficking demonstrates a lack of frankness in the interviews process, as opposed to a conclusion that sex trafficking for prostitution is no problem in Ireland.
In the end, all this causes me to wonder whether well intentioned reformers, including those who now advocate decriminalisation of possession of all drugs for personal use, need to be challenged. In the case of drugs, consumption would be legal while supply would be criminal.
Collectively, lawmakers need to look around corners rather than overlooking the hard issues.
Photo credit: The irish Times