Pming the escort should be fine, but be careful about talking to clients about who you are going to meet. At the end of the day you are talking to a username, you have no idea who is behind it. It might be police or just some numpty who gets his thrills waiting outside an escorts location looking to put a face to a username.It could be you on the front of the sunday world.
Alyssa Jenkins (22-10-14), The Equalizer (02-11-14)
With indies, it's not really enforced even in Sweden anymore, there have been very few prosecutions IIRC.
If Fitzgerald has her way and this becomes law in Ireland in a few years time, I will largely ignore it (despite being a married man with kids). I'll be a bit more careful, and wary of sting operations (new escorts with zero feedback will have a tough time).
As for stakeouts, I imagine the conversation would go something like this:
"Yes, officer, I was visiting this woman. She's a former escort, and I was once a client of hers, back when it was legal. We've become good friends, we like to get together for a drink and a chat, and sometimes we still have a good shag. Oh, she's still on the game? Funny, she didn't mention that".
Very unlikely they could film the money changing hands, so either I'm skint when they catch me on the way out, or I have a fair bit of cash when they catch me on the way in. I'll stop putting it in a separate envelope and pay her out of my wallet. What is an illegal amount of cash to carry in a wallet?
The only real chance of gathering evidence would be through electronic eavesdropping. If you're visiting her at the same time as "randyshagger" (or whatever) was scheduled to do so, that might be difficult to explain. But as being a escort won't be illegal, this would involve spying on an innocent person. This would need anti-terrorist powers that the police don't usually have, Fitzgerald would have to argue that prostitution = trafficking = organised crime = terrorism. A bit of a stretch, to put it mildly.
So this isn't coming in till mid 2015.. I presume same rules as before apply at the moment!
It won't become law until mid 2015 at the earliest.
To be perfectly frank I cannot see the police wasting their already precious time chasing ordinary decent folk having fun.