THE easing of border controls between the Republic and the North has created an open door for organised criminals to traffic humans and drugs between the two jurisdictions, it was claimed yesterday.
The North’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) yesterday said there are strong cross-border links between mafia-style gangs, networks of traffickers of both drugs and human beings.
SOCA director Bob Lauder, in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, said: "Organised criminals will seek to exploit any opportunity to enable their criminal business. This has been the case with the Irish land border and the Irish Sea between Ireland and Britain for some time.
"As the political landscape in Northern Ireland has changed, allowing the relaxation of controls in the interests of the rights of citizens of the North and South of Ireland, organised criminals have taken advantage for their own purposes."
One of the crimes that is causing most concern, especially in recent months, is the trafficking of human beings for sexual exploitation.
A number of agencies have been critical of the way that crime is policed here. Whereas 11 trafficking victims have been identified by police in the North in only the past 12 months, gardaí have only identified a handful.
According to Ruhama, which works with women in prostitution, one of the reason for the North’s success rate — and the Republic’s comparative performance — is that gardaí use immigration policing to investigate the crime whereas the North uses organised crime units.
"We have some concern that not enough resources are put in place to police this issue in the Republic of Ireland," said Geraldine Rowley of Ruhama.
"This is a serious crime where lives are at stake, we see it at first hand where women’s lives are brutalised. We believe this crime must be policed within organised crime. Currently the Republic of Ireland is policing the crime of human trafficking within immigration but this is not the appropriate area for what is essentially an area of organised crime."
Ms Rowley said Ruhama had worked with and assisted a number of women who have been trafficked into the North and who were moved freely around the island of Ireland for prostitution.
"The reality is that the island of Ireland is an open door for traffickers and the criminal groups are well organised.
"Ideally there should be a joint cross border [organised crime] police investigation unit for policing this crime effectively.
"The criminal gangs know only too well how to network across borders and we need better systems in place to counteract those of the criminal networks."
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, March 31, 2009
