US says Ireland failed to tackle human trafficking

IRELAND has been accused by American authorities of failing to properly tackle human trafficking, as new figures also show a fall in asylum applications and legal challenges to refugee decisions.

The US State Department’s Trafficking in Person’s report for 2009 stated that the Irish Government does not fully comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Ranking Ireland alongside Portugal and Greece as the only three EU “Tier 2” countries, the report said Ireland was “a destination and, to a lesser extent, transit country for women, men and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour”. The finding will come as an embarrassment to the Government, which has recently announced a new anti-human trafficking plan and which has introduced regulations to combat human trafficking in the past year.