By D Collins Irish Channel
The public was told: “We will outlaw ‘sex for rent’ exploitation and protect the vulnerable.” That, in itself, is a necessary and long-overdue reform. But instead of a clean, focused law, our elected government has bundled it into a Frankenstein package mixing together unrelated powers that threaten basic protections of victims, civil liberties, and public dissent. Welcome to the telex two-step: the legislative dodge, the Trojan horse, the creeping authoritarianism masked as reform.
- Sex for Rent: A Real Crisis Hijacked as Cover
Let us be clear: the practice of demanding sexual acts in exchange for housing is vile, exploitative, and preys on the dispossessed. Particularly now, with housing in crisis, vulnerable young people especially women, migrants, students are being cornered by landlords wielding the ultimate abuse of power. The National Women’s Council, the Irish Council for International Students, and many others have documented how “sex for rent” ads and coercion are reaching alarming levels.
It is right to criminalise that behaviour. The Government’s proposed Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025, in its General Scheme, includes two new offences: offering accommodation in exchange for sex, and advertising accommodation for sex.
But rather than presenting this as its own moral, narrow statute, the government has grafted onto it two other deeply contentious measures: (1) restricting access to counselling records in sexual assault trials, and (2) giving Gardaí power to force removal of face coverings when suspicion arises.
This is not simplicity or synergy this is legislative misdirection.
- From Protection to Prosecution: Why Bundling Will Backfire
a) Counselling Notes: The Victim Becomes Evidence?
Queer among the clauses is the shift on counselling records in rape or sexual assault trials. Under existing law, a court may, in certain circumstances, order disclosure of such records if they are materially relevant. But the proposal would force a pre-disclosure hearing in every case, remove the option to waive the hearing, and expose survivors to more legal trauma.
That means intimate, therapeutic data confessed to a counsellor for healing could be dragged into a courtroom. The effect would be chilling: survivors may withhold going to counselling, or fear retraumatisation. The very reform is justified in the name of fairness, but it risks turning victims into evidence, deterring reporting and undermining trust in the justice system.
b) Face Coverings: Power to Expose, Power to Intimidate
Also hidden inside the Bill is a grant of authority to Gardaí to demand the removal of face coverings when they “reasonably expect” someone is hiding identity to commit a crime or intimidate others.
On its face, this seems innocent: “If you’re hiding your face to commit crime, reveal it.” Yet that logic is dangerously elastic. What is “reasonable expectation”? Who defines intimidation? It is a tool primed for misuse: protests, rallies, assemblies the masks of dissenters, of minority groups, of surreptitious speech all could be subject to state exposure. It is the Orwellian turn: the state demands you bare your face under threat of penalty.
- Orwell’s Vision, Surveillance State in Motion
We are approaching a moment where the state feels entitled to our bodies, our trauma, our anonymity.
The state is saying: I can force you to unmask if I suspect you intend wrongdoing.
The state is saying: I can rummage through your counselling records even though they were meant for you alone.
And we are being told: trust us, we’re doing it to stop sexual exploitation.
But power corrupts. The confluence of these controls control over your mask, control over your mind’s disclosures leads straight to a regime of surveillance, intimidation, and consent extracted by fear.
- Critics Are Already Warning: A Rushed, Overbroad Bill
Voices across civil society are alarmed. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), People Before Profit, Rape Crisis advocates, and legal experts warn that the Bill is too big, too broad, and being rushed. They speak of a “legislative bungle” where essential protections (like sex-for-rent prohibition) are being held hostage to powers that violate human rights.
Senator Mark Ward cautioned: “A rushed law is a bad law.” Meanwhile, civil society organisations lament that the sex-for-rent clause itself wasn’t meaningfully discussed in pre-legislative hearings.
We are being asked to swallow three huge legal shifts in one gulp with minimal scrutiny.
- The Red Herring of the Headlines
As this seismic package approaches, what do national papers lead with? “Clare and Limerick to jointly host 2028 LGBT+ parades.” That’s the headline. In the same time window where our rights are being amended, our media gives front page space to civic celebrations while almost burying the transformation of legal safeguards. The optics are no accident. The struggle for control is not just in the Oireachtas it’s in public attention.
- What Must Happen Next
Split the Bill. Do not attach face-covering powers or counselling access changes to sex-for-rent legislation. Let each be debated on its own merits.
Rigorous scrutiny. Invite survivors, legal experts, civil rights groups, mental health professionals, and dissenting voices into Oireachtas committees.
Safeguards and limits. Any power over face coverings must have a clear statutory definition, judicial oversight, appeal rights, and protection against abuse.
Survivor-led protections. The counselling records reforms must prioritise trauma-informed principles: non-retraumatisation, privacy, consent, and avoidance of prosecutorial pressure.
Public transparency. Every use of new powers by Gardaí or courts must be logged, reported, and subject to oversight.
Final Thought: We Decide What Kind of State We Are
As Orwell warned, the worst tyranny is not one imposed all at once, but one slipped in step by step under cover of necessity, protection, or moral cause. If we allow the state to compel unmasking, to claim the minds of survivors, to fold dissent into suspicion then Ireland will be entering an era we scarcely imagined.
We must not stand respectfully by. The headlines, the spectacles, the civic pageantry these are distractions. The real fight is here, in this flawed, amalgamated Bill. Legislators may claim they’re saving lives; let us show them what they risk destroying: our dignity, our privacy, our democracy.