A response to a Dáil Parliamentary Question from Fine Gael TD for Dún Laoghaire Barry Ward last Wednesday as the Dáil resumed shows that there was an increase in the “number of victims of human trafficking recorded” by the Department of Justice in 2023.
According to the outgoing Minister Helen McEntee 53 such victims were identified in 2023 compared to 42 in 2022. That represents an increase of one third on the number identified in 2020 which was the lowest since records began in 2015 and must have been largely attributable to the travel restrictions imposed due to Covid 19.
As we have reported here before, the Irish state does not have a good record in addressing human trafficking and the US State Department again placed it on its Tier 2 list of countries in 2024. It was Tier 1 until 2021. A Tier 2 country is categorised as one in which “governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s (Trafficking Victims Protection Act) minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.”
In fairness, the Irish state is not unique in this among the more developed European counties as there are another ten EU member states including Italy, Greece and Romania on that list, and even Norway and Switzerland of whom one would generally tend to expect higher standards given their theoretically greater controls over who does and does not reside in the state.
The statistics on the number of prosecutions and convictions globally – just 7,115 convictions from 18,774 prosecutions in cases involving 133,948 identified victims in 2023 – illustrates the tiny deterrent that the law represents in this obscene trade.
This is partly due to the fact that states like China, Iran and Cuba (which is estimated to earn between $6 and $8 billion annually from the contracting out of involuntary workers including their celebrated “internationalist” medical workers) control much of the slave trafficking for the purposes of supplying cheap state-controlled labour.
Others with direct experience in the specific area of trafficking for the purposes of providing virtual slaves to be used as “sex workers” – mostly women and girls, but in some cases also boys – are in little doubt not only that this is a major part of the trafficking that takes place into and within the Irish state but that the number of reported cases only represents a small part of what is going on.
The National Referral Mechanism report published last year found 24 instances of trafficking for sexual exploitation, 15 for labour, 2 for criminal activity and one for the purposes of “organ removal.” A small portal into hell one fears. The National Referral Mechanism is the body whose reported statistics were supplied by the Minister.
Curiously the Garda records of reports of “human trafficking offences” as reported by the Central Statistics Office show that there were just 212 recorded instances of human trafficking between 2015 and 2023 compared to the 495 reported to the Department of Justice by the National Referral Mechanism.
Mattie McGrath referred to the trafficking of children to be enslaved in brothels in the Dáil last November. Deputy McGrath mentioned a Cork University report which I believe was published as a chapter of a book in 2011. It is rather sobering to read, as one wonders how much more diligent the state is now in implementing the checks that were identified as absent or deficient 15 years ago.
The paper by Horgan, Martin, and O’Riordan refers to the dangers of children being trafficked into sexual exploitation where “care arrangements are less strictly monitored, for instance at weekends or at nights.” Recent cases involving children who were under the responsibility of TUSLA and the role of contracted private “care” companies would suggest that this is still a major problem.
They quote another report that “512 separated children went missing from State care between 2000 and 2010.” No one even seems to be able to place an accurate figure on the numbers since then but they are clearly greater. In March last year as reported here, Aontú leader Peadar Toíbín claimed in the Dáil that 22 children had gone missing from care in the month of January 2024 alone.
He referred to one horrific case of a young Nigerian girl discovered in a brothel in appalling conditions. He also mentioned how files sent by retired Justice Dermot Simms on the issue of child exploitation to Minister Roderick O’Gorman had apparently been deleted on grounds of GDPR.
While some have accurately identified the fact that centres being used by TUSLA are targets of the sort scum who are engaged in this, a source for a 2023 report by Dr. Mary Canning, Marie Keenan, and Ruth Breslin also stated bluntly that “the response from the State, from Tusla, has been uniformly poor.”
While former Minister for Justice McEntee sought to assure Deputy Ward in her response that “a number of significant measures have been taken to combat human trafficking” and that new identification, screening and training procedures are in place under the Third National Action plan on trafficking,” clearly the Irish state cannot claim to be on top of the situation.
From speaking to people who are closely involved in the horrific trade in fellow humans, or who come into involuntary contact with it through their work or living situation, I now notice things that I might never have known. Things that are happening openly in Dublin and no doubt in other parts of the country. Things that ought not be tolerated in any civilised state bound to protect the very basic rights of children in particular.