Victims must not be silenced

The nation locked its doors, closed its businesses, grounded flights and shut down critical infrastructure.

In an address akin to a disaster film Taoiseach Leo Varadkar declared: “We are facing extreme blizzard-like conditions across the country from 4pm.”

As zero hour approached our streets emptied and Ireland fell silent.

Evelyn Cusack, of Met Eireann, gave a glimmer of hope saying they were optimistic today will see a “dramatic improvement”, with temperatures hitting one to two degrees.

In the midst of Arctic scenes, the nation prepared for the worst but showed their best.

Efforts were made to help the homeless, vulnerable elderly citizens and the sick.

While all locked themselves away our brave emergency service workers, the living angels of our State, worked around the clock.

Gardai, ambulance, firefighters and soldiers braved the freezing temperatures and continued to fight on.

Their courage only matched dedication. by their IT is simply not good enough we are so reliant on sex trade workers to give evidence in court to get prosecutions over the line for pimps, traffickers and buyers.

The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 was supposed to be the start of a new approach with sex trade workers quite rightly being treated like the victims.

But it is horrendous that an informed source has admitted to the Irish Mirror the big problems trying to get women – who are likely scared and intimidated – to co-operate.

An estimated 1,000 women work in prostitution every day and the vast majority have been trafficked into Ireland.

Many are trapped by the demand fuelled by these gangs and new legislation is urgently required so the real criminals are brought to justice.