Men can choose from a range of women as if shopping for a mobile phone

JUST as a person can choose the mobile phone to suit your lifestyle, so men can choose an escort to suit their tastes and means.

The glut of escort sites means there is almost a conveyor belt of availability at the touch of a button. Practically every shape, age, orientation and nationality is on the market.

The women, and they are nearly all women, are willing to offer services that men will not get from those with whom they are romantically involved — services that can cost €1,000 a night.

As Geraldine Rowley of Ruhama points out, a normal sexual relationship is about a relationship. This is about issues of power and self gratification for men.

So who are these women?

Irish escorting is certainly a transglobal phenomenon. The breadth of nationality is astounding. One website has 27 women all from Brazil, already identified as a country from which girls are trafficked.

The same website only listed 40 Irish women, two less than the Spanish contingent. It also had three women from Australia.

The motivation for becoming involved seems to be just as varied.

Some say that they are just doing it to bolster their income, others to finance college.

Those women who are not under the control of a pimp are earning large sums of money cash in hand and tax free.

However, according to Ruhama, who often deal with the women down the line, whenever the work dries up they suffer a great deal of mental trauma because of the way their life has gone or because they are finding it hard to ween themselves off drugs.