Chairman of anti-Lisbon treaty group Libertas to stand as Ireland North-West candidate

Colin Gleeson

DECLAN Ganley, the chairman of Libertas, the anti-Lisbon treaty group, said he hoped to win people’s trust as he announced he is to stand as a candidate in June’s European parliament elections in the Ireland North-West constituency.

Declaring his candidacy yesterday, Ganley said he had made his decision after “careful consideration and planning” and pledged to visit every “town and county in the constituency” before the election on June 5.

Ganley’s party intends to run candidates across Europe in an attempt to turn the elections into a “proxy referendum” on the treaty.

The multimillionaire businessman, who is considered to have played a significant role in influencing Ireland’s No vote in the Lisbon referendum last June, made his announcement following last week’s criticism of Libertas by the Standards in Public Office Commission.

In a report on Friday, it said Libertas had not provided it with information on how its No campaign was funded and run. Libertas claimed it was intending to supply the information.

In his candidacy speech, Ganley said it would be an “uphill battle” to win the trust of the people of Ireland North-West over the next three months.

“Nobody who puts themselves before the public has any right to expect to be elected,” he said.

Claiming to know “what it takes to create wealth”, Ganley said Ireland was being led by people with no ideas. He said the EU had grown “arrogant, out of touch and dangerous”.

Ganley’s chosen constituency comprises most of the old Connacht-Ulster constituency plus Co Clare, Longford and Westmeath.

All three sitting MEPs, Sean O Neachtain of Fianna Fail, Jim Higgins of Fine Gael and the Sligo-based independent Marian Harkin are defending their seats but Sinn Fein, too, will be fielding a strong candidate in Padraig MacLochlainn, the Donegal county councillor who was director of elections for the party’s campaign against the Lisbon treaty last June.

Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have yet to declare their second candidates in the field.

Racegoers say nay to Cheltenham

Irish horse racing fans who make the pilgrimage to the four-day meeting in the UK are feeling the pinch

Colin Gleeson

And they’re off . . . well, maybe not. The annual exodus of the Irish to the Cheltenham festival looks like it may be a trickle this year as credit-crunched racing fans swap their binoculars for a television remote.

Thousands of Irish horse-racing enthusiasts are likely to be forced to give the festival a miss, with the numbers set to travel down by as much as 45%, according to some specialist tour operators.

The four-day Cheltenham event is Britain’s biggest National Hunt racing festival, and pits the best of Irish and English bloodstock against each other over 25 races. The festival, which begins on March 10, usually attracts Ireland’s rich and famous, as well as thousands of ordinary customers who save all year for the trip.

Last year an estimated 250,000 people attended the festival, with Irish fans accounting for 15,000 of those visitors. Irish enthusiasts are generally regarded as key to the success of the €70m event, wagering about half the estimated €780m of bets laid and helping to drink 20,000 bottles of champagne and 210,000 pints of Guinness.

This year, however, tour operators are reporting a significant fall in bookings while many of those travelling are planning to spend less time there than before.

Joe Tully, the owner of the Carlow-based Tully’s Travel, one of the biggest carriers of racegoers to English meetings, said: “There’s been an obvious downturn. Last year we brought over about 1,500 people, but this year we’re bringing between 800 and 900. Even those who are going are only staying one or two nights as opposed to three or four.”

Tully said hoteliers in the Cheltenham area have been forced to drop a condition that customers must book a minimum of four nights during festival week.

“We’re not expecting any increase in the numbers travelling over between now and the festival, because people are just being far more conservative,” Tully said. “The corporate end has been hit hard because executives feel they can’t be seen to be travelling over to Cheltenham having asked employees to take pay cuts.”

Walter Greacen of Leopardstown Tours said his business was down 30%. “We normally take about 100 people over but that’s down this year, and we don’t expect it to pick up either,” he said.

Cheltenham has long been the gathering place for the elite of the Irish corporate world. However, now closing time has been called on the boom years, the party “looks like it’s coming to an end”, said Tully.

While top Irish racing figures and horse owners such as JP McManus and Michael O’Leary will still be making the trip, corporate bookings have dropped by at least 15% as businesses book fewer tents, boxes, private helicopters and restaurant tables.

“Companies are watching their budgets these days,” said Andy Clifton, Cheltenham’s communications manager.

Hotels and guesthouses in the area have reported a drop in numbers. Jayne Lillywhite, the co-owner of the Cheltenham Townhouse, said: “We’ve had quite a change in the numbers of people we’re expecting from Ireland this year. A lot of the regulars are just not coming.

“We get a high proportion of Irish people staying with us, and we’re finding it a lot harder to fill the guesthouse. We still have a couple of rooms free, whereas in previous years we’d be filled by September.”

Lillywhite said some Irish guests who had booked early pulled out as soon as they were asked for a deposit. At the Cheltenham Guest House, the owner John Hopwood said only 60 Irish people had made a booking, compared with 300 in previous years.

John O’Donoghue, the ceann comhairle and a longtime racing fan, is giving Cheltenham a miss this year. A spokesman said he would be needed in the Dail during the period and had missed out on the 2008 festival for the same reason.

Charlie McCreevy’s European Union office did not respond to queries on the commissioner’s festival plans. McCreevy was criticised by Brussels colleagues in 2007 when he missed official business to travel to Cheltenham. He responded by saying he had gone to the event for 30 years and would continue to do so.

Despite the number of negative reports, Clifton was hopeful the eventual drop in Irish numbers will be in the order of 10% rather than the 45% feared.

David Williams, a spokesman for Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, said the Irish statistics may reflect a general drop in the numbers travelling to the festival. “I’m not sure if it’s just an Irish thing or a Cheltenham thing,” he said. “From what I know, the racecourse hasn’t sold quite as many tickets as it did last year.”

Close to 230,000 spectators are expected to attend the four-day event, bringing in gate receipts worth more than ¤10m to the authorities.

Untested tanning injections have entered Ireland

Colin Gleeson

Illegal “tanning” injections are being imported into Ireland despite warnings that they are untested and could lead to the misdiagnosis of skin cancer.

The Irish Medicines Board (IMB) has made five seizures of Melanotan, a synthetic hormone, in a year. The product, dubbed the “Barbie Jab” or “tan jab”, was being imported by people who had bought it over the internet for as little as €33.

Melanotan, which is not licensed for use by humans and has not been safety tested in any EU country, is popular with those who consider other fake tan methods to be awkward or time-consuming. The agent is injected into the skin and stimulates tanning by boosting the amount of melanin, the body’s natural protection from the sun. Unlike sun-beds, users do not require exposure to UV rays and it is claimed to work within 10 days.

The drug has alarmed health campaigners as it can change the appearance of moles and confuse doctors into misreading cancer signs. It also has side-effects and has been criticised for leading to needle sharing among teenage girls.

Originally developed as a potential weapon against skin cancer, Melanotan is still undergoing clinical trials. Nevertheless, unlicensed varieties have found their way on to the internet. The IMB said this weekend that five individual samples of the drug have been seized over the past 12 months.

“They came in from either the US or the UK,” the board said. “We have been in contact with the authorities there to prevent the supply to Ireland. It’s only available through unauthorised channels. The UK has had similar problems.”

The drug comes in a package that includes vials of powder to be mixed with sterile water then injected into the skin. Weekly boosters keep the tan topped up. The side effects include nausea, headaches and fatigue. It also can lead to weight loss and increased libido. Trials of Melanotan in America were halted amid concerns the drug was causing dangerous increases in blood pressure.

In Britain health workers have reported that up to nine teenage girls were sharing a needle to inject the drug.

Writing in the British Medical Journal last month, researchers claimed the drug could confuse cancer diagnoses by making malignant moles seem benign.

Professor John Armstrong, of the Irish Cancer Society, advised against using the substance. “It goes without saying that if you are injecting something into your skin that is going to change the appearance of moles, you are going to obscure the diagnosis,” he said.

Clonmel was one of the areas hardest hit as the River Suir bursts its banks and rain continued to fall

Colin Coyle and Colin Gleeson

Severe floods caused havoc in many parts of the country yesterday, with Clonmel in Co Tipperary the worst affected. The army was called into the town, which has suffered bad floods in the past, as all but one of its bridges became impassable.

According to Dolores Fahy of Civil Defence, the organisation had to evacuate between 30 and 40 houses using high-set trucks after the River Suir burst its banks on Friday night and heavy rain continued over the weekend. Up to 2,000 sandbags were distributed to residents.

“Its too early yet to assess if the flood works in the town have helped,” she said, referring to long-term prevention works. “It’s unfortunate Clonmel has been flooded while they are at such an early stage.”

Other parts of Tipperary, Cork, Kilkenny, Cavan, Offaly, Westmeath and Galway were also dealing with flooding. In Nenagh, 35 patients were evacuated from a nursing home after river levels rose.

Darren Ryan, a Clonmel borough councillor, said there was “some property damage to both private homes and businesses”, but the flood-alleviation group was working to minimise damage. “The quays are impassable, as is the Old Bridge area,” he said. “The water is 3ft to 4ft over the ledge of the riverbank.”

Local businesses were badly affected. John Stokes of Stokes & Quirke, an auctioneer, said he had to use a boat to access his office, which would now be closed for several days.

“It’s the people living in the houses around here I feel sorry for,” Stokes said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Martin Mansergh, a local TD and minister of state with responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW), said the cellar of his constituency office was flooded. He said the OPW is investigating the possibility of speeding up flood works in Clonmel. “Phase two of the work centres on the quays and we’re hoping to bring it forward,” Mansergh said.

Mansergh said the flood works have been “future-proofed” against climate change and would only be vulnerable to one-in-100-year events.

Denis Dunne, a Fine Gael councillor, said it was “a shame” the alleviation scheme wasn’t finished. “They’ve only completed phase one of three so far, but hopefully when that’s done it will be a final solution to the flooding problem in Clonmel,” Dunne said.

Some of the capital’s most famous eateries are being forced to cut their prices in an effort to attract customers

Colin Gleeson

IT’S a far cry from the glory days of the Celtic tiger when Dublin’s top restaurants were booked out weeks in advance, and parties of noisy diners racked up €1,000-plus bills as they toasted the good times.

Now, the capital’s customer-starved restaurants, staring at empty tables, are lowering their sights and slashing their prices to attract diners, in an effort to keep business ticking over.

Six of Dublin’s best-known eateries — two of them boasting Michelin stars — are getting the ball rolling by launching a “January sale” that promises a two-course lunch with a glass of house wine for €20.

The hitch is Chapter One, L’Ecrivain, Bentley’s Oyster Bar and Grill, China-Sichuan, Town Bar and Grill and the Cellar Restaurant at the Merrion hotel will only offer the deal for two weeks, and only from Mondays to Thursdays.

The culinary fire sale is the idea of Richard Corrigan, the celebrity chef who last year opened Bentley’s, his first Irish restaurant, as the economy ground to a halt.

“Everybody in the industry is worried at the moment,” Corrigan said. “We have to encourage people to come out and have a good time. The restaurant business must be down by at least 10% to 15%, if not more, and some of the finer restaurants in London are down by 30%.

“Times are tough, and this is the beginning of a really difficult time for the restaurant and hotel industry.”

Sallyanne Clarke, who with husband Derry runs the Michelin-starred l’Ecrivain, agreed restaurants were in trouble. “Where we would have been doing between 80 and 100 lunches a day, now we’re doing 30 to 40,” she said.

“The weekends are great, but your business won’t survive on just that. Monday to Thursday was always the corporate end of eating out, while Friday to Sunday was the personal end. People are still going out, but the corporate end seems to have dried up.”

Another Michelin-starred restaurant, Mint in Ranelagh, also said it had changed its menu to attract lower-budget customers. It now offers a five-course tapas menu, including two glasses of wine, for €55.

Dylan McGrath, Mint’s owner and head chef, says he is planning to open a cheaper version of the establishment to make his food more affordable. McGrath said many people were put off going to Mint because of its prices.

“I’d like to make my cooking more accessible,” he said. “A lot of people won’t go to Mint because of its price range and some people even feel intimidated because of its cuisine.”

Eamonn O’Reilly, the owner of One Pico restaurant and Bleu Bistro Moderne, claims he has also cut prices, although he is not sure how long they will be maintained at lower levels. The restaurant started to offer a three-course lunch for €19.95 before Christmas.

“It’s difficult to know what’s going to happen or when we’re going to be able to put our prices back up,” he said.

Ross Lewis of the Michelin-starred Chapter One said that while business was good and prices were competitive, the restaurant was braced for whatever may lie around the corner.

Another celebrity chef, Gary Rhodes, has closed his Dublin restaurant Rhodes D7 for a revamp. It is due to reopen on St Patrick’s Day, when it will feature a cheaper menu, a wine bar and shared platters.

“Every single restaurant is suffering due to the slowdown. Gary was aware of this and came up with the idea for a wine bar and platters from one of his restaurants in London,” said a spokeswoman. “The whole menu is being redesigned.”

Even lower-priced restaurants are finding it difficult to attract customers and are having to run offers. Alexandra Pach, a spokeswoman for Milano in Dublin’s Temple Bar, said: “We have one at the moment called the ‘January bounceback’, which means anyone who bought a main course during December got a voucher to come back and get a main course for free during January.”

Colin Gleeson

Muslim women who wear the burqa in Ireland are at increased risk of pelvic fractures during childbirth because of vitamin D deficiency due to a lack of sunlight, a consultant warns.

Babies born to women with vitamin D deficiency are also more prone to seizures in their first week of life, according to Dr Miriam Casey, of the Osteoporosis Unit in St James’s hospital in Dublin.

A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by some Muslim women. In hot countries, enough sunlight gets through to give them sufficient vitamin D, but this may not happen in countries where there is limited sunshine, such as Ireland and Britain.

Casey said she was aware of cases involving pelvic fractures, and warned that these could become more frequent as Ireland’s Muslim population increased. “Ireland’s temperate climate doesn’t have the intense sunlight that keeps burqa-clad women from becoming vitamin D-deficient in their own countries,” she said.

Vitamin D helps the body to absorb calcium and is crucial for making bones strong. The greatest source is sunlight.

Casey said the fractures occur at sites of particular weakness which develop in under-mineralised pelvic bones. In these women’s babies, low calcium can cause “serious complications such as seizures, growth retardation, muscle weakness and fractures”.

“As a toddler, carrying the weight of the torso can force the development of a bow-legged appearance and a waddling gait,” she said. “Later, there can be rickets, which is caused by vitamin D deficiency, with swollen wrists and bones that fail to fuse in adolescence.”

Darker skins can produce as little as 1% of the vitamin D that fair skins produce. Moreover, studies have found that the rate of many diseases rises the further north one moves, leading researchers to suspect that vitamin D may play a greater role in health than previously thought.

Casey said: “As we see a rise in the number of Muslims in Ireland, it’s going to become a massive problem. It’s worse in England whose Muslim community is older. There are already problems in the Rotunda [a maternity hospital in Dublin] and the paediatric hospitals.”

A spokeswoman for the Islamic community in Ireland said she was unaware of health problems suffered by women wearing burqas.

Last year, Muslim women in the UK were warned that wearing the hijab could cause poor health for them and their babies. A UK government spokesman said: “We are not interfering in a Muslim woman’s right to wear the hijab, but we are stressing that we all need sunlight on our skins.”

Consumers warned against eating Irish pork and bacon after toxic traces found

Colin Gleeson

ALL products produced from pigs slaughtered in Ireland were recalled last night due to a dioxins scare.

Consumers were warned not to eat Irish pork and bacon as an investigation was launched into the discovery of the toxic substances.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) and the government made the announcement after pork products on several farms were found to have had between 80 and 200 times more dioxins than the safety limit.

The recall affects all pork produced since September 1.The recall also affects Irish exports of pork to other European countries. Britain, Germany, France and Italy all import significant quantities, while America and Korea are also buyers.

The investigation will attempt to identify the processors and foods involved. It is believed contaminated feed was used at a total of 47 farms. Nine of these were pork-producing. The remaining 38 were beef farms, with one of those also producing pork products.

Brian Cowen, the taoiseach, and Brendan Smith, the agriculture minister, held talks throughout yesterday following the discovery. Fine Gael said the problem was “potentially the biggest threat to the agri-food sector since foot and mouth”.

The movement of animals at 30 farms has been restricted, and it is feared that the €400m-a-year pork industry will be badly affected. It is believed thesubstances discovered in the animals carcasses are understood to be PCBs, organic pollutants which have been the source of health fears worldwide. The dangerous man-made chemicals were banned in 1979. They effect the immune and reproductive systems and can, in certain cases, cause cancers.

Dioxins are environmental contaminants that may be formed during combustion processes and may be present in industrial wastes. It is illegal for dioxins to be in food products above a certain level.

Consumers were advised to consult the websites of the FSAI and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for further information.

DAFF officials held meetings with experts last night to establish what further action to take. It is believed the contamination first came to light on Monday but was only confirmed by test results yesterday.

Brian Cowen, the taoiseach, and Brendan Smith, the agriculture minister, held talks throughout yesterday after the discovery.

Trevor Sargent, the Green Party’s food minister, said the government acted swiftly to defend food safety and avoid undue worry for consumers.

He said the affected feed had been banned and the pig production units using it had been restricted. “Food safety and the consumers’ interest have been the main priority behind this government action,” he said.

Traders are desperate to shift stock as the credit crunch deepens

Colin Gleeson

IRISH car dealers are so desperate to get rid of growing stockpiles of second-hand motors that they are reducing prices by as much as 25%, a Sunday Times survey has found.

The collapse of new vehicle sales and a slowdown in the second-hand market has left dealers with vast supplies of depreciating cars. Even when vehicles have been reduced to below normal prices, a buyer can still haggle a further 12% off.

A Sunday Times reporter made offers on 30 cars in locations throughout the country offering to buy immediately and for cash. Dealers who agreed to lower their prices complained of approaching “break-even levels”.

In one case, a Ford Focus which would normally cost €24,000 was offered for €19,950. Another which would previously have sold for €23,000 was available for €16,800.

Other savings on already-reduced prices included €1,450 on a Peugeot 206 listed at €7,950; a €2,995 reduction on a Ford Focus selling for €19,995; and €2,950 off a Toyota Avensis advertised at €18,950.

Conor Faughnan of the AA said: “What you have found corresponds with what people have been telling us. Dealers are desperate to sell stock because nothing is moving for them. The slowdown is astonishing. If you are in the market for a car, there is tremendous value and choice to be had.”

He advised buyers to be “extremely aggressive in negotiating”. “You should be unrealistic in how low you offer and try and get a substantial amount knocked off. If you don’t, go elsewhere.”

Faughnan’s tactics were used in the survey. Dealers were offered at least 20% less than the amount they were seeking and few refused to bargain from this starting point.

First Choice Autos in Dun Laoghaire was offered €6,500 for a 2005-registered Peugeot 206 with 45,000 miles on the clock and advertised at €7,950. “You’ll be robbing us at that price, but it’s a buyer’s market,” the seller said, and agreed to the offer made.

At Car Nation in Bray, Co Wicklow, a three-year-old 206 with similar mileage was listed at €6,750. When the seller was offered €5,000, the dealer complained that it had already been marked down from €7,250, before agreeing to let it go for €6,250. “We’re just trying to get rid of all our stock at the moment,” he said.

A 2007 Ford Focus with 7,000 miles on the clock, was advertised by EP Mooney in Tallaght at €15,995, but the dealer was willing to take €14,000. At Morans of Avoca in Wicklow, a Toyota Avensis advertised at €18,950 was reduced by €2,950.

“We want to move a couple of cars on, so I could let that one go for ¤16,000,” the seller said. “We’re going to take pain on it, but there’s not many lads going around with that money these days.”

Discounts of up to €6,000 were offered on BMW 5 Series models. At Maxwell Motors in Dublin, a 520d with 12,000 miles clocked up was selling for €50,995, but for €45,000 the company could “do a deal”.

Not all dealers would negotiate, arguing they had already reduced their prices to break-even point. Navan Ford Centre in Meath refused to reduce the €18,950 price of a high-spec 2007 Ford Focus because it had already been reduced from €23,000.

New car sales are down 18%, with 151,426 sold so far in 2008 compared with 186,096 in the same period last year. Just 644 cars were purchased in November, compared with 1,416 for the same month in 2007. Next year, the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (Simi) is predicting sales of 120,000.

Motorcheck.ie estimates that 71,987 used cars changed hands in July, down from 85,180 in July 2007.

As the euro increases in value against sterling, many Irish buyers are picking up used cars in Britain. Motorcheck.ie estimates that 43,470 cars were registered as imports by the end of September.

Simi has called for the introduction of a scrappage scheme, allowing old cars to be traded in for fixed amounts of money.

Claim comes after eight patients die at hospital after being misdiagnosed

Mark Tighe and Colin Gleeson

Doctors in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda have written to Mary Harney, the health minister, warning that patients’ lives and safety are being put at risk by budget cuts and Health Service Executive management strategy.

The letters were released last week under the Freedom of Information Act just as a report on the hospital’s cancer programme revealed that eight patients who were misdiagnosed have now died.

David Vaughan, chairperson of Drogheda’s medical board, wrote to Harney on February 5, saying it needed 180 extra beds to cope with the transfer of acute services from Navan and Dundalk. He described the situation in the hospital as “rapidly deteriorating” due to “unfulfilled commitments and promises by the HSE and government”.

The HSE wants to build a new regional hospital in the northeast but earlier this year Dermot Ahern, foreign affairs minister, said there was not a “red cent in the exchequer” to pay for this.

Paul Keelan, a consultant cardiologist, said on February 29 that he had been forced to abandon chest pain and heart-failure clinics with “immediate effect”. He was unable to continue with the two clinics, which dealt with 150 new patients and 320 return patients in 2007, because the HSE refused to hire a second cardiologist.

The patients from the cancelled clinics would have to attend a regular cardiology clinic which already had a six-month waiting list.

“Inevitably, this will lead to a further increase in the waiting time for this clinic,” said Keelan. “The point when I will have to refuse all new out-

patient referrals will arrive imminently. I feel very disheartened . . . to say that I feel let down by the HSE is a massive understatement.”

Harney has told the Dail that the issues raised by consultants have been discussed by Department of Health and HSE officials “to ensure that any action necessary is taken to guarantee the provision of safe services to patients”.

Another letter sent last December by Finbar Lennon, a consultant breast surgeon, complained that the hospital had “an inability to deliver a safe, acute hospital service”. Lennon said “nobody in the HSE is listening to the frontline clinical staff or wants to hear what is really happening”. He said the “utter folly” of the management strategy to direct all regional emergency workload into Drogheda was unsafe. “It clearly is woefully short of basic resources, capacity and some vital expertise such as microbiology support.”

In a letter copied to Drogheda’s medical board, Lennon said HSE teamwork and transformation projects will “inevitably fail” due to frontline staff being excluded from the “so-called consultation process”. No one could say there had been an improvement in the three hospitals in Navan, Dundalk and Drogheda in the past 18 months.

“Central management’s policy of using and depending on external experts and on hand-picked selective advisers to push its agenda has been most unwise,” he wrote.

Declan Reidy, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, told Harney that on the first weekend in February, 13 out of 28 patients scheduled for emergency surgery were treated despite doctors working extra hours. “One patient with an unstable ankle joint injury had despaired of waiting and took his own discharge against medical advice,” wrote Reidy. He said delays in trauma surgery increase mortality rates, especially among elderly hip-fracture patients.

A spokeswoman for the HSE said the Drogheda hospital “must work within its allocated resource. It can decide to prioritise developments within the resources allocated.”

A prostitute tells Colin Gleeson of her life on the game and its devastating consequences for mind and body

There is no front garden, no gate; it’s just a doorway into a tall, dark building on the side of the street. The door opens ajar and there is a woman peering out. She flashes a smile once she’s comfortable that it’s not the police or some mugger. And the door opens.

The hallway is long and there is a stairwell at the end of it, shrouded in darkness. The hall is dishevelled, muddled, basic. There is a payphone against the wall on the left and an old-looking bicycle propped against it.

There are three doorways on the right-hand side along the corridor. There are dim lights emanating from each. “It’s this way,” she says in a hushed tone, beckoning towards the staircase. She is barefoot and wearing a red dress of sorts. The stairs are spiralled and the floor is dirty. The whole place is just as seedy and wrong as you might imagine.

The room at the summit of the stairs is better lit. There are blankets on the floor and there is a laptop propped up on some sort of box. Through the laptop, she obtains her clients. There is a smaller room off the main room that is well lit, like an alcove. She points inside, “In there.”

This room is much smaller. And darker. There is no light switched on. The only glow is coming from the LCD display on the alarm clock that is sat on the bedside locker. The door is still open into the larger room, so there is some light in the room. Most of this room is taken up with a single bed. There is a shelf above the bed. Along it are dotted a number of mannequin dolls. They are oddly juxtaposed with towels and other such accessories.

We sit on the bed. The conversation is about everyday mundane things, such as how cold it is at the time of year. It’s small talk.

“There’s someone else in the next room,” she explains nervously, “just so you know.” She starts to talk about her life and what she does. How it affects her. She says she’s not happy. “I don’t want to keep doing this, obviously. I don’t like it. But it’s not like I’m a junkie or something like that, so it’s bearable. But I couldn’t do it full-time. That would f*** with your mind. At the moment, I don’t really let it get to me too much. I try to block it out.” She’s 22 and explains that she got involved through a friend of hers from Pakistan.

“It was obviously for money reasons,” she explains. But it was her own initial mistakes that led her down this path. “I remember I was out of work at the time and I was texting this guy I knew but didn’t really like. I think I needed something that week so I just decided, ‘I’ll text him and see what he says.’ And then he ended up saying he’d pay a load of money for doing something really small. Then I didn’t do anything for ages, but then I did it again, and it kind of spiralled from there.” She talks about her social life, and how it leaves her with a wall around her the whole time.

“Socially, it’s unacceptable. It affects me completely. It leads you into this seedy little world. You definitely can’t be innocent going into it anyway. It affects your friends as well, because you can only do so much and say so much to them. You can’t really be yourself. You’re always putting up a front, so it’s a bit sad.”

She tells some harrowing stories of friends and people she knows who do what she does. “I’m really clear with people beforehand. I always let them know that there’s someone else here, and if there’s any problems, I just say, ‘Take your money and go.’ I’ve never been hit or anything like that, but I’ve heard some really bad stories. Some people I know who do this are really, really sad. It’s like €10 and €20, no condoms, stuff like that. They’re really sad people. I have a friend across the road that does it as well, and she’s like, oh God, really sad. She doesn’t look at it like a business; she sees it as a means to get the rent money for tomorrow. And I think that’s a pretty common thing in this way of life.

“You’ll always get people who want to do things to you, or rape you or something, but I’m quite good at defusing situations like that. But there’s always the chance that something bad could happen. I get people in wanting to be pissed on and dominated and all this stuff that I don’t do.

“The girl across the road has had some disgusting experiences. She was raped before, and had to have her surgery to repair the damage. It was really horrific what she went through. Stories of people getting beaten up and not getting paid and stuff are pretty common. It’s terrible. Really horrible. She just lives hand to mouth. Sex with anyone. No condoms. It’s just a horrible way of life. She doesn’t actually know I do it, so I don’t feel I can talk to her about it, because I don’t want her to think it’s snobbery. It’s a lost battle with her. I wouldn’t say anything to her because it wouldn’t make any sense. That’s her way of life. It’s all she knows what to do. She talks about being out of her head and doing fellas and things like that.

“She gets very emotional when she’s drunk, you see. She has broken down in front of me before. She’s an emotional wreck. I feel like a coward for doing what I do. It almost seems like the easy way out, even though it’s not easy. But it would be so much harder to try and live a normal life during the daytime. But it’s really hard waking up in the morning.

“The worst part of this, for everyone who does it, I think, is that this is what their life has come to. I’d rather be dead than live her life, do you know that way? If that’s how your life gets, I’d rather be dead. It’s like playing with fire. Especially with no condoms. She’s a really nice person, really likeable, bubbly. But she never has any money, ever, for anything. She’s a very loud, sort of ‘in your face’ person. But she covers everything up, so you never really know what’s going on.” She explains that it’s something that affects the sort of person she has become.

“Obviously, I’m ashamed. That’s why I don’t tell my friends. It’s definitely not something to go bragging about. I feel like it’s kind of a case of having to [do this] at the moment, it’s like a stepping stone or something. But I do feel ashamed. Although I try not to sit down and get depressed about it, I do get depressed sometimes.

“It’s usually about other things, not specifically about this. But those other things are usually a knock-on effect from this. What I do here is just another thing on top of all the other problems I have. I feel really pathetic having to have sex for money, so that gets me down from time to time. I always feel afraid. Even when I bring someone up, and even with you, I’m still, no matter what, a little bit scared the whole time. But it’s just something I have to do. I’m very self-conscious.

“It makes you look down on yourself and you’re constantly getting comments and stuff like that. It’s like ‘oh God’ the whole time. You can explain yourself 10 times to someone, but the attitude never changes, you just become what they want you to be. What I do at night doesn’t make me feel good about myself the next morning.

“I can barely look in the mirror. That affects me then for the whole day.

“That’s probably the biggest thing about this — it really affects my confidence. I can’t make friends; I can only give so much of myself. I’m attached to this dirty, seedy world that I don’t want to be attached to. Even though I want to give my full self to certain people, I can’t because I don’t want to scare them.” She says that she wants to get away from this, to get out of this world. She wants a proper job, and soon. “I want to get out of it at some stage. But I think once you do it, it’s always with you. In the long run, I think the quicker you get out of it, the better. Maybe the end of next year,” she says.

But she seems to have no idea what’s going to be different in her life then from now that will allow her to do this.

“It’s simply a case of I don’t think I’ll have too much to worry about by the end of next year financially. Hopefully.”