Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 December 2020
488. Deputy Holly Cairns asked the Minister for Justice the number of prosecutions and-or convictions under the purchase of sexual services section of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 from when the Act was commenced until 1 December 2020; the number of persons prosecuted and-or convicted who identified as sex workers in the legislation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44562/20]
View answerAt the outset I would emphasise to the Deputy that prosecutions are a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions who is independent in the performance of her functions.
I am informed by the Garda authorities that since the commencement of the relevant legislative provisions on 27 March 2017, the number of reported incidents of 'Brothel keeping' and 'Payment etc. for Sexual Activity with Prostitute' are as follows:
|
Incident Type |
Reported Incidents |
|
Brothel keeping |
68 |
|
Payment etc. for Sexual Activity with Prostitute |
131 |
The 68 incidents of 'Brothel Keeping' had 39 unique persons linked to those incidents as 'Suspected Offender' to date; 32 of which were female and 7 were male. There were 22 unique persons that had either a charge or summons associated with the identified 'Brothel Keeping' incidents to date; 18 of which were female and 4 were male.
There have been 131 incidents of 'Payment etc. for Sexual Activity with Prostitute' since the 27th March 2017. There were 63 incidents that had either a charge or summons where the wording of the charge/summons indicated an offence contrary to Section 7A of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993, as inserted by Section 25 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017. The charges/summons identified relate to 64 persons (all of which were male), 63 of which are unique with 1 person receiving charges for two separate incidents.
With regard to the information sought on the number of convictions, I am informed by the courts service that this information is not yet maintained in such a way as to provide the response sought by the Deputy. It can only be retrieved by way of a manual examination of each individual court record. As I am sure the Deputy will appreciate, this would require the expenditure of a disproportionate amount of staff time and resources and it is therefore not possible to provide the level of detail sought.
