This Bill is bound to become law, it has too much momentum behind it from too many groups, church, press, politicians, feminist groups etc and no group large enough to stand up against it. Those sex workers, and their advocates, who have publicly opposed it have been ignored clearly giving away, if anything does, that this bill is not designed to protect sex workers, it is designed to eliminate them.
While we all realise that the passing of this Bill will, in reality, mean very little to the majority of us unless we are caught in one of the initial raids that will occur after the Bill has been passed, after that the policing of the Bill will be as dependent on Garda resources as everything else is, it doesn't mean it can be ignored.
We can choose to only visit ladies we know and carry on as discretely and privately as we did before but it doesn't mean we can ignore what this Bill will do.
This Bill will make life more dangerous for many of the ladies working here while doing little or nothing to help those it was supposed to help, just look at any proper research into the consequences of the Swedish model in other countries.
We can try to play it down and pretend we'll go on as before but for a lot of ladies working here things could get a lot worse.
This is not a good day
"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness" - Samuel Beckett