The practice of female genital mutilation should be specifically outlawed in Ireland, according to a voluntary organisation of development workers, Comhlamh.
The call for the criminalisation of the procedure - common in parts of Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia - follows growing concern that immigrants may begin carrying it out in Ireland.
Comhlamh says the criminalisation of the practice should be accompanied by education and awareness-raising programmes.
Its co-ordinator, Mr Colm O Cuanachain said the trend in other European countries is that immigrant communities from countries where it is practised usually maintain the tradition. "There should be explicit reference to female genital mutilation in Irish legislation rather than it being covered by more general laws," he said. "It would be a preemptive strike."
Mr O Cuanachain acknowledged there are "cultural sensitivities" surrounding the practice but "the bottom line is that it's torture and we cannot sustain any cultural norm which involved torture of children, regardless of the sensitivities and traditions". A public meeting in Dublin yesterday, organised by Comhlamh, was told that doctors in maternity hospitals are increasingly seeing pregnant women who have been genitally mutilated as children.
Dr Valerie Donnelly, a gynaecologist who has worked in two Dublin maternity hospitals, said she had come across a case per month in recent times.
Dr Donnelly, who is the Irish representative on a European Commission committee examining the practice, said there were problems with criminalising female genital mutilation, but advocated some sort of ban.
An asylum-seeker from Nigeria, who campaigned against the procedure there as a midwife, told the meeting she did not want the practice to be carried out in Ireland among immigrants.
The term female genital mutilation refers to all procedures to partially or totally remove the genital organs for non-therapeutic reasons.
The World Health Organisation estimates that at least two million girls a year are at risk of genital mutilation and up to 132 million have undergone it. Comhlamh is holding further public meetings on the topic today in Cork and tomorrow in Limerick.