Irish Republic's Child Trafficking Corridor Must Be Closed
DUP Assembly Member for East Belfast, Robin Newton, has demanded that the Irish Republic does more to combat child trafficking. Mr. Newton made the comments following an End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children report. The EPCAT report recommended that in the Irish Republic: “Special attention should be paid with regard to the ratification of international legal standards addressing child trafficking”. It highlighted that Ireland “has also been identified as a transit point for children trafficked to the UK”.
Commenting the DUP MLA said,
“The Irish Republic must do more to tackle the scourge of child trafficking. In an EPCAT report the Republic of Ireland has only been graded as having made ‘some progress’ towards combating child trafficking and as such is ranked in a lower category than the UK, Romania, Taiwan and Denmark who were deemed to have ‘made notable efforts’.
Traffickers have found direct routes into Britain increasingly difficult because of increased security and the report stated “They are now looking to other points of entry with the border crossing between Northern Ireland and the Republic being used and the Ireland-Wales ferry crossings”.
The presence of the land border means that the practices in the Irish Republic are very much of interest to those of us in Ulster. Children as young as three are being bought and sold. I will be working with my colleagues in the Justice Committee and the Policing Board to seek reassurances from the Republic of Ireland’s government that action is being taken. This is really a matter on which the United Kingdom and the RoI must take a collective approach.
The EPCAT report highlights that hundreds of young people are disappearing from State care every year, and this is an area that my colleague Michelle McIlveen has proposed new legislation in the Assembly to address.
Efforts have been made to maximise protection measures for Northern Ireland but the Irish Republic must bring itself up to the standards of other European countries."
