[2] Since the law that criminalises clients came into being, with the purpose of reducing the demand for prostitution,[3] the number of prosecutions for the purchase of sex increased from 10 in 2018 to 92 in 2020.
In a report from UCD's Sexual Exploitation Research Programme the development is called ”a promising start in interrupting the demand for prostitution.”[4][5] Most prostitution in Ireland occurs indoors.
[7] The most famous madam in the Dublin of the 1700s was alleged female serial killer Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly who operated the Maiden Tower kip house on Copper Alley, off Fishamble Street in the southwest part of the city.
Convicted of murdering and dismembering shoemaker John Dowling on St. Patrick's Day 1760, Kelly was executed by partial hanging and burning at the stake on Gallows Road (modern Baggot Street) on 7 January 1761.
As with most garrison towns in Ireland,[11] prostitution proliferated in areas surrounding Army barracks, as impoverished Irishwomen gravitated towards military personnel, who were in receipt of a steady income.
The area was comparable to the Monto in Dublin, whose sex trade reached its zenith from the 1860s until the 1950s and whose profits were also aided by the large number of troops stationed in the city over the period.
[13] In the late nineteenth century the street was chosen as the location for the first Dublin Corporation housing scheme,[14] due to the cheaper cost of purchasing land in areas with long standing social problems.
The changing nature of Irish culture following the successful fight for Catholic Emancipation between 1780 and 1829, saw a redefining of the status of women.
These Acts enabled the Irish Constabulary to arrest any woman suspected of prostitution and force her to submit to a medical examination for venereal disease.
Anna Haslam in Dublin and Isabella Tod in Belfast, both of the Ladies National Association, organised opposition and a recognition not only of the plight of these women but also of the root causes.
Saul was considered "notorious in Dublin and London" and "made infamous by the sensational testimony he gave in the Cleveland Street scandal",[19] which was publicized in newspapers around the world.
His life and career have been the subject of scholarly analysis and speculation, one reason being the paucity of information on the lives and outlook of individual male prostitutes of the period.
[citation needed] In Kevin Kearns' oral history collection Dublin Tenement Life, however, he comments that many of the prostitutes in the Monto had, like Philomena Lee, been unmarried and pregnant and were disowned both by their families and by their babies' fathers.
Many of the kip-houses also illegally sold drink which made it easier to part a man from his money... Several madams became quite wealthy, wore expensive jewels, owned cars, and even sent their children off to prestigious schools abroad.
In reality, while the departure of British forces from Ireland severely damaged the financial prospects of Irish sex workers, organized prostitution continued in the Monto.
Similarly to St. Vitalis of Gaza before them, Duff and Devane began an outreach to the prostitutes living in often brutal and inhuman conditions in the "kip houses".
[27][28][29][30] As part of this work, Duff established the Sancta Maria hostel, a safe house for former prostitutes whom the Legion of Mary helped to run away from their "kip keepers" and start a new life.
[27][31] Prostitution, including smaller Kip-Houses posing as pubs and operating discretely while paying protection money to corrupt Irish politicians and law enforcement, continued to exist in Dublin.
"[35] But for the most part, prostitution in Ireland overwhelmingly shifted into individual women offering to sell sexual services to passing motorists while walking along urban streets.
"[37] This is why, however, the Regina Coeli hostel which was opened in Dublin in 1930 following the Legion of Mary's crusade against the kip-keepers in the Monto, reflected their founder Frank Duff's belief that unwed mothers should be taught how to provide for and raise their children.
By doing this, however, Frank Duff and the Legion of Mary, however, were defying the established consensus at a time when Irish culture was still very Jansenistic, which held that the children of unwed mothers should be protected from the stigma of their illegitimacy by being put up for adoption as quickly as possible.
[27][28][31] The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935[38][39] prohibited contraception and required sex crimes cases to be tried in camera and prevented media coverage.
Notable was the story of June Levine who collaborated with Lyn Madden, a former Dublin sex worker for twenty years in the 70s and 80s, to write Lyn: A Story of Prostitution (1987)[7][40] Madden witnessed her pimp, John Cullen, firebomb the home of former prostitute and women's rights activist Dolores Lynch.
Any suggestion of organised prostitution was limited to a small number of massage parlours in an environment where the workers were empowered to negotiate favourable terms and conditions for themselves.
Society seemed accepting of discreet, indoor prostitution establishments and every week the mainstream entertainment magazine In Dublin ran advertisements for escort services and 'massage parlours' (brothels), which were usually the business operations of a small number of men and women, who knew running brothels was illegal, but were prepared to take the risk, given the massive profits involved.
[49] Operation Quest was launched by the Gardaí in 2003, with the aim of tackling human trafficking, prostitution and organized crime within the Irish lap dancing industry, followed by Operation Hotel in 2005, with the aim of tackling the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe to work in the sex industry in Ireland.
A group of non-government and union bodies emerged pressuring both the current government and opposition parties to abolish prostitution, by criminalising the buying of sex, along Swedish lines.
Prior to the hearings, a number of the committee members, such as Independent Senator Katherine Zappone, had already committed to a sex purchase ban, and the majority of submissions and presentations supported this measure and were associated with Turn Off the Red Light.
[80][81] Ruhama (Hebrew: Renewed life), established in 1989, is a Dublin-based NGO operated by the Catholic Sisters of Our Lady of Charity order,[82] which works on a national level with women affected by prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation.
A chief complaint it has of the "Turn Off The Red Light" campaign is that it conflates legal and consensual sex work with illegal human trafficking.