Prime Time - "Profiting From Prostitution"

Prime Time goes undercover to expose the frightening reality for women involved in prostitution across the cities and towns of Ireland. We expose the people profiting from the sex trade and report on the ever-growing demand in Ireland for paid sex with young, foreign and often vulnerable women.

This Tuesday, 9.35pm on RTÉ One, Prime Time broadcasts an hour-long investigation into the people profiting from prostitution in Ireland.
On any given day there are up to 700 women advertising sex for sale on escort agency websites that circumvent Irish law. More than 90% of the women online advertise as independent escorts, supposedly free from controlling pimps. The opposite is the sordid truth, as Prime Time can reveal.

Following a six-month investigation, reporter Paul Maguire goes right to the heart of organised prostitution. He goes face to face with the pimps behind the criminal networks spanning the country and uses cutting-edge technology to trail hundreds of women being moved, almost without trace, all over Ireland.

Paul Maguire discovers 'escorts' being made available in every county. In towns and cities across the country, anonymous apartments are home to young, vulnerable foreign women, kept inside to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of Irish customers. He meets Suzzy in Kildare, 19 years old and working 14 hours a day, seven days a week from a room she rarely leaves.

After months of surveillance, Prime Time can expose a major prostitution ring that systematically moves women, barely out of their teens, between brothels in Ennis, Dundalk, Cavan, Athlone and Dublin. As Prime Time discovers, the authorities are struggling to stop pimps who flout the law without fear of being caught.

Technology, from mobile phones to internet sites, underpins the dramatic expansion of prostitution in Ireland - and helps the organisers evade detection. For the first time, the programme details how names, ages, nationalities and locations of women advertised for prostitution, made available 24 hours a day, constantly change. Viewers will also see first hand the boss of an 'escort agency' interviewing a potential new recruit, revealing the sleazy reality behind the glossy websites.

Throughout the programme, the reality of a prostitute's life in Ireland is laid bare - a rapidly growing phenomenon driven by demand from Irish men in every part of the country.

Background:
This RTÉ current affairs report was originally planned as an episode of Prime Time Investigates. It had been partly filmed and researched when RTÉ opted in November 2011 to pause transmission of any further Prime Time Investigates series pending the completion of RTÉ's review work arising from the Fr Kevin Reynolds case.

RTÉ stated at that time that broadcast of a further series of Prime Time Investigates, which had been due in December, would be suspended until Professor John Horgan's expert independent review into RTÉ's Television current affairs editorial processes had been completed. Professor Horgan's work was concluded in December last and is awaiting publication.

RTÉ broadcasts this report now because of the serious issues of criminality and exploitation of vulnerable women involved in the sex industry. The project is the work of an editorial team continuing to work within the Prime Time programme unit and production has continued since November under the supervision of acting Editor of Current Affairs Steve Carson. The programme has been finalised and checked in the context of the recommendations by Professor Horgan.

No decision has been taken, pending conclusion of the current BAI Investigation, into the return to air of Prime Time Investigates as a series strand

The BAI, which is separately investigating a single episode of the Prime Time Investigates series, has as a courtesy been informed of RTÉ's broadcast decision.