A new report published today recommends that landlords engaging in sex-for-rent exploitation should be criminalised, including where they propose such an arrangement and it is refused by the tenant. It also recommends extending protections for renters.

Feargha Ní Bhroin, NWC’s violence against women officer and author of the report, said: “Sex-for-rent exploitation is gendered. It seems to be overwhelmingly women who are impacted, and it is mostly men in privileged positions relative to the women — they have housing and the victims do not — who are carrying it out.

“At its root is the intersection of the housing crisis with a general context of gender-based violence. It primarily affects women who are renting a room in a house, as opposed to own-door accommodation so they enter a situation of living with their predator, and these renters do not have the protections granted to other tenants.

“The two-tier rental system where some renters are protected by law, but others are not, must end.”

Orla O’Connor, director of the National Women’s Council, added: “Sex-for-rent exploitation is damaging, degrading, and dehumanising for women.

“Our research has shown us that it is the most marginalised women who are impacted. We are talking about women experiencing homelessness, migrant women including women refugees who are trying to leave direct provision, women fleeing domestic violence.

“And we know it is happening all over the country. However, there is also a lack of in-depth research about the real prevalence of this form of sexual exploitation.”

Ms Ní Bhroin concluded: “We make several recommendations in this report. Government must take immediate steps to end the exploitation of women in this situation by outlawing sex for rent exploitation and extending tenancy protections to all renters.

“However, it is an unfortunate truth that in a heavily constrained rental market like the one we are currently experiencing, abuse of renters will continue. Sex-for-rent exploitation is unlikely to be successfully eliminated until the housing crisis is ended.”

A number of proposals to ban sex-for-rent arrangements have been brought to the Dáil in the past two years. A private member’s bill on the issue was introduced by Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin in March.