The political and religious history of Ireland is inextricable from its legislative approach and public attitude to sex work.
The Irish legislative and social services structures related to sex work have been defined by nationalism and Catholic morality. Over time, this has created a harmful landscape of criminalisation, censorship, and systemic double standards that recent sex worker rights movements and legislative change have uncovered.
In this article, we unravel legislative changes that have created the current situation, highlighting how the fight for sex workers' rights has revealed the hypocrisies of lawmakers and the very real impacts of moral outrage and double standards on sex worker safety. We draw on testimony from former workers to support this view.
Irish independence and moral legislation
When Ireland became independent from Britain in 1922, there was a drive to define a "pure" Irish identity, as a pushback against perceived English amorality. From this, a push for "public morality" became a driving force behind the foundation of the new state.
During this time, the Catholic Church had an unprecedented influence on state policy, think of this as the inverse of the separation of Church and State in the United States. In short, the church positioned itself as the moral guardian of the state.
This led to the criminalisation of aspects of sex work. The language used in legislation targeted "solicitation" and "loitering", criminalising the worker, not the client. At the same time, a criminalisation of anything that "threatened public morality", under the umbrella of the Censorship of Publications Act 1929, created unsafe conditions.
State social services and hypocrisy
Church-run institutions like the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes confined sex workers. The Magdalene Laundries, which professed to house "fallen women", have been described as a “collective trauma for people of a certain age” by Cillian Murphy, the star of "Small Things Like These", a 2024 film that scrutinised these institutions.
They acted like a state-sponsored outsourcing of social services for sex workers, where the church punished workers by hiding them away from public view, in an effort to cleanse society and punish the vulnerable.
The double standard of the state publicly condemning sex work while covertly covering up and ignoring the role of male exploitation and demand created further harm for sex workers.
Legislative change and the rights movement
The seeds of change were sown between the 1970s and 1990s with the gradual erosion of the church’s power and the beginning of a more secular state. Notable legislative reform to the contraceptive and divorce laws helped loosen the church’s grip.
Legislative changes made after the Millennium saw an incremental shift in the landscape. The Nordic Model, also known as the end-demand model, was put into place.
The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 made purchasing sexual services an offence, while leaving the sale of the service (by the worker) decriminalised.
This model has seen criticism. Sex worker groups and NGOs report an increased fear of police, with an increased Gardaí (police) presence looking to crack down on purchasers, leading to a rise in prosecutions, and a reduced visibility of sex workers on the street.
Safer-working practices such as working together have also been criticised, with advocacy groups saying the law had adverse effects on sex workers’ safety and users’ access to services.
The human cost: Sex workers' testimonies
Sex workers have described being moved out of visible, walkable places to isolated settings because policing and public outrage made street work dangerous. One sex worker said the law made them "More fearful of going to the Gardia"- this led to more interactions moving to private spaces and online, where vulnerability rises.
In an Amnesty report: Structural Violence Against Sex Workers In Ireland, sex workers raised a reduced ability to screen clients and negotiate safety after client criminalisation meant activity moved underground.
Women supported by NGO Ruhama stated that feelings of "isolation, shame, and judgement" were worsened by laws framed as moral policing. Reports also revealed that criminalisation didn’t lessen the everyday harassment and violence faced by sex workers; indeed, sometimes it made it more difficult to report for fear of added attention, arrest of colleagues, and the fear of triggering trauma.
Exposing hypocrisy, in Ireland, in the battle of safety vs morality, keeping up appearances tended to win over worker safety. NGOs' analyses, supported by testimonies, reveal that policy rhetoric over morality prioritised enforcement over tangible safety measures.
A recurring theme in sex worker testimony is that legal reform promised protection, while delivering isolation. Sellers were only nominally decriminalised, while structural conditions - poverty, immigration status, stigma - compromised safety, with frontline services reporting a rise in demand for trauma care and social support that the system couldn’t deliver.
The path forward
Across the twentieth century, and into the 21st, the powerful role of the Catholic Church in morality wars post-Irish independence resulted in repressive legislation, compromising sex workers’ safety.
From the partial liberalisation of the 1990s to the adoption of the Nordic/‘end demand’ model in 2017, the Irish legal landscape has been slow to switch focus from moral policing to securing the human rights and safety of sex workers.
How the landscape develops remains to be seen. Ongoing reviews of sex worker rights and the emergence of evidence-based harm-reduction strategies present real opportunities for change. Yet, the ongoing moral stigma, under-resourcing of social services, and the political appeal of stigmatising narratives continue to halt progress.
A rights-based future relies on lawmakers moving past symbolic decriminalisation and moving towards sex workers' lived realities. Robust safety supports, participatory policymaking, and a public health framework based on dignity, not shame, are essential. Only by recognising sex workers as human rights holders can the country move past historical patterns of control and towards a path forward that prioritises safety and autonomy.