The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) has welcomed the passing in the Seanad of a bill aimed at identifying and supporting victims of human trafficking.

The commission said that the legislation marked “an important and significant step” in establishing a victim-centred National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for suspected victims of trafficking.

The human-rights body added, however, that the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2023 still lacked some “crucial protections”.

IHREC welcomed the bill’s recognition of specialist NGOs (non-governmental organisations) as ‘trusted partners’ in the identification process as “significant and positive”.

Assistance for victims

It also welcomed the appeals process included in the legislation, as well as a two-stage procedure (detection and identification) to support the provision of early assistance.

The body called, however, for more details on the assistance and supports to be provided to victims, expressing concern that many issues in this area were being left to be provided through ‘soft policy’.

IHREC also stated that the NRM should apply equally to all victims, regardless of their nationality, immigration status, or pending international-protection application.

The human-rights body also expressed concern that the legislation did not provide any form of statutory protection from prosecution for victims of human trafficking – where a person has committed a crime as a direct consequence of them being trafficked.