Day 6: Are you aware that the law is currently being reviewed? Do you support the Department of Justice finishing this internal review, jeopardising the whole exercise?
This review has been postponed until 2025 and is a significant failure of accountability and transparency. It will now be delivered 5 years late if this new date is to be believed.
Active sex workers are the most important voices needed in this review. It is of vital importance for sex workers’ voices in shaping policies that impact their lives.
Will you commit to listening to sex workers or will you ignore marginalised communities as much as the current government has?
Day 5: Will you listen to sex workers when they say they feel less safe under the law and have faced increased violence, threats, murder and stigma?
Where any aspect of sex work is criminalised, including client criminalisation it has adverse health outcomes for the workers.
Sex workers in Ireland face a rising tide of violence, evictions, and isolation due to the Nordic Model’s criminalisation of clients and punitive brothel-keeping laws. Will you listen to sex workers when they say they need decriminalisation?
Day 4: A sex worker was murdered in Limerick last year. Are you aware that since the laws changed in 2017 there has been a 92% increase in violent crime against sex workers?
Sex workers are extremely unlikely to report an attack because of stigma and huge mistrust of the Gardaí. This has only gotten worse since the introduction of client criminalisation. Less than 1% of sex workers report crimes against them to Gardai, compared to 81% of the general population.
Criminalisation isolates sex workers, limits access to peer support, and increases stigma. Sex workers continue to operate in a climate of fear, where they are vulnerable to violence and exploitation, precisely because of the law.
Day 3: Do you think the sex work laws in Ireland are successful?
Recently released court statistics show that there have been only a handful of prosecutions of clients.
Meanwhile, sex workers in Ireland have faced increased violence, threats, murder and stigma.
Any form of criminalisation of sex work harms sex workers. This focus on punishing clients has done nothing to improve the situation for sex workers and has actively made things worse. Our laws drive the industry further underground, making it more dangerous for sex workers.
The law has created a hostile environment where clients and sex workers themselves are deterred from reporting violence or exploitation for fear of prosecution, leaving sex workers more isolated and at risk.
Day 2: Are you aware that almost all of the people who have been prosecuted under our brothel-keeping laws are young, migrant women?
You don’t have to take our word for it; the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission report on Ireland’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) highlights that brothel-keeping laws are being applied in a racist way.
The law targets young migrant women, not pimps or traffickers.
Two sex workers were given a jail sentence in 2019 for the crime of working together for safety, one of whom was pregnant. Others have been fined, deported and left with a criminal record.
Day 1: Did you know that when sex workers work together for safety, it is considered illegal under the law?
Sex workers are forced to work alone to work legally, which is not something any other worker is forced to do.
Criminals are targeting sex workers precisely because they are forced to work alone or risk breaking the law. Alternatively, they target those working together for safety because those in so-called brothels are less likely to call the police.
Most sex workers we speak to want to work with another worker. Working alone is enforcing the isolation that sex workers already feel. Shame and stigma mean that sex workers feel disenfranchised
Next Friday we will vote for the next government of Ireland. We are asking you, as sex workers and allies, to talk to the future leaders of the country about the rights of sex workers.
We’ve made it easy and put together this handy, printable PDF that you can stick on the back of your door to remind you.
We know many pressing issues in Ireland need change. Sex workers are affected by the lack of secure housing, rising rents, the cost of living crisis, lack of affordable childcare, an underfunded health system that doesn’t work for them and inadequate mental health services.
We’re trying to change the conversation around sex work in Ireland and we need your help!
