Ireland cannot afford to be complacent about the issue of human trafficking with many people having the mistaken belief that our remote geographic position protects us from this modern form of human slavery, a University Women of Europe conference in University College Cork heard over the weekend.
Dr Angela Veale, Department of Applied Psychology, Cork, said that the experience of professionals on the frontline clearly indicates the possibility of human trafficking in Ireland.
"There have been quite high profile cases of children who have disappeared from hostel accommodation and the question is what has happened to these children? There are lots of reasons why kids might disappear.
About half of them may have been re-unified with an extended family member. Where children disappear from hostels it may be that they are fed up of the quality of life there. But from the psychological services and police we have 30 or 40 cases of investigations in to possibilities of trafficking."
In 2004 details of five unaccompanied minors reported missing were highlighted on the Garda missing persons website. In addition, eight other unaccompanied minors were reported as missing from Dublin accommodation centres.
A number of procedures have been put in place to prevent the trafficking of separated children once they arrive in Ireland. For example, children have to sign in and out of hostels and there are reporting mechanisms between the hostels, health boards and the Immigration Bureau to inform authorities of concerns about children.
However, Dr Veale said there was serious concern that these controls were inadequate as most children who arrive as unaccompanied minors are in hostels, which are outside the remit of the Social Services Inspectorate.
"Typically, adolescent girls aged 15 years and over are placed in unsupervised hotel accommodation with no full time care staff. This is a risk factor for child trafficking in Ireland. We have a sense of ourselves as a little country that sits on the edge of Europe and is somehow protected from what goes on. We cannot take it for granted. This is an international industry and it is getting to all corners of Europe."
Dr Veale said an awareness of the trafficking in Europe of human beings, especially children for sexual exploitation, was a relatively new phenomenon with Irish authorities only becoming conscious of it over the last three to four years.
Meanwhile, Dr Maura O'Donohue, of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who is an expert on trafficking, said that a conservative estimate would put the overall number of persons trafficked into prostitution and slavery worldwide at between one and four million.
Dr O'Donohue said war and internal conflict was a "huge factor" in trafficking because of the breakdown in social structures. Since 1993 there were between 40 to 59 wars worldwide each year which led to the trafficking of persons, human rights abuses and the spread of HIV.