Gardaí are investigating a number of cases of forced marriage involving migrant children as young as 12 years of age, it has emerged.
The young girls were typically trafficked into the country and coerced into marrying older men from migrant communities in Ireland.
While forced marriages in the UK have typically involved young British Asian women being trafficked out of the country and forced to marry Pakistani men, gardaí have found evidence of young Roma girls being coerced into marrying men from their community in Ireland.
Det Supt John O'Driscoll, deputy head of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, confirmed yesterday that a small number of cases were being investigated. "It can be part of the culture of some communities, often involving teenage girls," Det Supt O'Driscoll said. "We're going to be working closely with police in the UK on this to address human trafficking issues like this."
He said tracking young women who have been trafficked into or out of the country for forced marriages forms part of a larger operation being conducted by gardaí and police in the UK aimed at tackling human trafficking.
Det Supt O'Driscoll was speaking yesterday at a conference on missing and exploited children, organised by Fine Gael MEP Mary Banotti and the Irish Centre for Parentally Abducted Children.
The trade in human trafficking - mostly involving women and girls who are forced into prostitution - is estimated to be worth around €6.4 billion a year.
Det Chief Supt Nick Kinsella, who is head of the recently-established UK Human Trafficking Centre, said investigations were aimed at detecting the scale of human trafficking and supporting victims.
"Much of our work is about changing human trafficking from being a low-risk, high-profit crime to a high-risk, low-profit crime," he said.
"We want to make the UK a hostile environment for traffickers. This is ultimately an issue for cities, towns and villages right around the country."
Speaking at the conference yesterday, Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan said there was little evidence of substantial human trafficking into the country.
However, he said the potential threat of such a "despicable crime" was enough to warrant preventive action, such as new legislation with tough penalties.
While new legislation has been promised on the issue for several years, Mr Lenihan pledged that that a new Bill will be published in the "very near future" creating an offence of trafficking for the purpose of sexual or labour exploitation.
Also speaking at the conference, Geoffrey Shannon, a solicitor who specialises in child and family law, said much more needed to be done in order to ensure we have a robust child protection system for children at risk of being trafficked or exploited.
At present the approach of law-makers has been to try to fit provisions relating to trafficking into existing child law.
Instead, he said a more radical and comprehensive legislative framework was needed to deal with the issue.
Mr Shannon called for a national plan to address child trafficking. This could include a multi-agency team to meet the needs of separated and vulnerable children; international collaboration on trafficking; and providing separated migrant children with the same supports available to Irish children in care.