Irish children forced into criminality inappropriately punished, major report finds

Irish children forced into criminality are being inappropriately punished, as authorities fail to identify them as victims of trafficking, a major report from the US State Department finds.

The 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report on Ireland, published on Friday, is one of hundreds on individual countries from the US government’s TIP office which monitors international human trafficking trends.

It says while Gardaí are identifying more trafficking victims – 114 last year compared with 67 in 2024 – current regulations do not allow for the identification of Irish victims “and officials rarely identified child victims”.

People trafficking does not have to mean the victim is brought into Ireland. Trafficking can happen within Ireland.

In the case of children, travel does not have to be involved. Children forced into criminality, begging, labour or sexual exploitation are defined by the UN as having been trafficked.

Overall, says the report: “The Government of Ireland does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.”

It designates Ireland as a ‘tier 2’ country, where designations are from tier 1 – countries that fully meet standards to eliminate trafficking, to tier 3 where they do not and are not making efforts to.

The report finds “increasing investigations, prosecutions, and convictions” are taking place, and notes two convictions for forced labour trafficking last year, and one for forced criminality.

However, there are “continued systemic deficiencies and gaps in victim referral, assistance, and identification”.

Plans for a beefed-up process to identify victims, which would empower agencies other than Gardaí – eg Tusla, HSE – to determine a person has been trafficked, have not progressed. The revised national referral mechanism (NRM) would also provide for the identification of Irish nationals as trafficking victims.

The new NRM, provided for in 2024 legislation, would allow victims to access supports without having to give a statement to Gardaí or act as a witness in any prosecution. It has yet to be fully implemented.

“As in 2024, all identified victims in 2025 were foreign nationals and the majority were female sex trafficking victims,” says the report.

“Due to limitations in the current NRM, the Government did not report identifying any Irish nationals, and observers reported proactive identification of children remained infrequent.”

[ Drug barons ‘a cancer’ on State, says judge, as two boys sentenced for drug-debt intimidationOpens in new window ]

The report comes days after the president of the Circuit Court said drug barons using children as foot soldiers were “like a cancer”.

Judge Keenan Johnson, in the case of two boys involved in a drug-debt intimidation shooting at a house in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, said “all State resources should be used to catch and lock [gang leaders who traffic children] up”.

He said these criminals “prey on children like the accused, plying them with drugs, building debts, to manipulate them to act as their foot soldiers in completion of their nefarious activities”.

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Ihrec) said the TIP report showed progress in combating human trafficking had stalled.

“The Government must not step back from commitments already made but not yet implemented,” said chief commissioner Liam Herrick.

“Ireland has made progress, and we welcome it. But the test now is whether that progress is sustained and built upon in critical areas such as victim identification, specialist accommodation and child trafficking.”

He called on Government to “reaffirm its commitment to the statutory national referral mechanism and provide a clear pathway to its implementation.

“At a time when the evidence shows that victims – particularly children – are still being missed, strengthening our identification and protection systems must be an urgent priority.”

The US TIP report said provision of accommodation to trafficking victims remained inadequate, and there was a lack of trafficking-specific training for the judiciary.

Last month, an Ihrec report found the level of “victim blaming” of children caught up in crime was “horrific”, and of “a high risk” children were being misidentified as suspects and offenders rather than as child trafficking victims.

[ Children trafficked into criminality face ‘horrific’ level of victim blaming, report saysOpens in new window ]