Madam, - Your edition of April 14th reported that Ireland had signed the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. This is a welcome development. However, your report quoted Minister for Justice Michael McDowell saying that "instances of trafficking have been rare to date". Unfortunately, this is not the case.
As part of its work with women involved in prostitution in Dublin, Ruhama has been in contact with 150 women trafficked into Ireland for prostitution over the past seven years. It is reasonable to assume that many more times this number of trafficked women have entered the country. It is wrong to minimise this population of women and the thousands of men who exploit them. - Yours, etc,
KEVIN LALOR, Chairman, Ruhama, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin 1.