As the one English-speaking nation within the EU, Eire is a perennially fashionable vacation spot for English language college students, thought to at present quantity round 40,000.
They arrive to a rustic beset by a years-long housing disaster and sometimes reply to adverts in personal Fb teams.
Brazilian Ana Paula Viana got here to Dublin in 2022 to check English and full a grasp’s diploma. Like many college students, she scanned listings on Fb to search out lodging.
Ana, who had labored as a journalist in Brazil, responded to an advert for a single bed room within the metropolis centre.
“When I asked him for a price he said it wouldn’t be necessary to pay if I slept in his bedroom a few times a week,” she says.
“I felt a bit shocked. I just forgot about it and tried to move forward because I really needed to find a place to live, which is wrong because I would have reported it somewhere.”
The adverts nearly by no means make any point out of sexual requests, however when younger girls reply, the intentions of the advertiser quickly grow to be clear.
This apply of asking for intercourse in lieu of lease has seen an “alarming surge”, in response to the Irish Council for Worldwide College students (ICOS).
The organisation lately carried out a survey which confirmed that one in 20 college students had been propositioned on this approach.
Laura Harmon, govt director of ICOS, mentioned “urgent legislative action is needed” to handle the difficulty.
Two payments designed to particularly outlaw it fell when the Dail (decrease home of the Irish parliament) was dissolved forward of an election final 12 months.
The brand new minister for justice, Jim O’Callaghan, has mentioned the federal government is “seeking to make offering sex for rent a specific criminal offence” and that work is ongoing between his division and the lawyer common “on a suitable provision”.
“Another problem is with women from Latin America or South America,” she says.
“People in general sexualise us as women. Some men take advantage because we are from Latin America, they think we are dying for any place, or we are poor or something like that.”
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Darling says a landlord instructed her she may share his mattress ‘as a result of he’s single’
Darling Duran is from Bolivia and in addition got here to Eire to check English. She responded to a web based advert for a one-bed house, obtainable at €700 (£578) per 30 days.
When the owner replied, she says he instructed her “he was working at night so the bed is free, so I can stay in his room. He told me because he was working the bed is free, so I would stay in his bed, but sometimes he would be there”.
The advertiser, who Darling believed to be from a European nation, instructed her that “he had no problem to share the bed with me because he is single”.
After Darling refused, the person tried repeatedly to ask her on a date.
“I don’t think it’s funny,” Darling says. “In that moment I was very uncomfortable, and I was thinking that nobody deserves to go through this kind of situation.”
With common rents in Dublin round €2,500 (£2,064), up 4% on final 12 months, and a scarcity of rental properties, worldwide college students will proceed to show to social media to supply lodging.
Till particular laws is launched, it is feared they may proceed to come across those that see sexual alternative within the midst of Eire’s continual housing disaster.
