1-in-20 international students are being offered sex-for-rent arrangements, a new report has said.

The Irish Council for International Students has today released a report outlining the prevalence of sex-for-rent arrangements.

On Lunchtime Live, the Irish Council for International Students CEO and Senator Laura Harmon said some of the statistics from the report were “alarming”.

“Unfortunately, one of the alarming statistics [is] that 5% of female respondents said that they'd either seen an ad or they were propositioned directly in relation to sex-for-rent,” she said.

“There isn't clear legislation in Ireland to clamp down on this, so we're very much pushing the new Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan to introduce standalone legislation to explicitly ban sex-for-rent.

“There is legislation that exists against coercion [or] against intimidation and it is illegal to purchase sex but I suppose there isn't specific legislation for this issue and it is actually in the Programme for Government.

“The former Minister for Justice Helen McEntee had said she was going to do it [but] she didn't do it - we're hoping that Jim O'Callaghan is going to act now on this.”

A person holds and counts budget money. Image: imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co. KG / Alamy

Senator Harmon said she will be “holding the Government to account” on this.

“He has committed to discussing this with the Attorney General and he said that he is looking at a solution but it is in the Program for Government so I'll certainly be holding the Government to account on this,” she said.

“This is a symptom of the wider housing crisis and unfortunately there are predators out there that are preying on vulnerable people, vulnerable renters.”

"Quite worrying"

Senator Harmon said English wasn’t a lot of the survey respondents’ first language.

“The survey was specifically for international students, so the majority of respondents were English language students and also from third level education as well,” she said.

“1-in-10 students had encountered an accommodation scam - I suppose that's no surprise, given that scamming is so prevalent in our society but unfortunately for them, when English isn't your first language as well and they get caught up in these scams, they then don't know how to report it.

“It was quite worrying that a quarter of them said that they didn't know about their rights as tenants and 38% of them had no lease agreement.

“We also found some really worrying figures in relation to standards, for example, 12% of respondents said there was no heating where they were living, 10% of them said they had no access to a cooking facility - so there needs to be more enforcement when it comes to standards.”

Silver keys hanging in a modern door lock. Image: Alamy

In relation to sex-for-rent arrangements amongst survey respondents, Senator Harmon said a lot of the ads can be “obscure”.

“A lot of these ads can be very obscure, they can be ambiguous, they can be things like ‘must be up for having fun in the house’ and ‘can make other arrangements in order to pay’,” she said.

“We've had students telling us that they've been offered ‘you can be a maid instead’ or ‘must be willing to share a bed’.

“Sometimes it's not till they actually get to the property that they realise what is being offered and that can be quite an intimidating, vulnerable situation for people.”

"I don't have a problem sharing the bed"

Also on the show was Darlene, a student from Bolivia here in Ireland to study English.

“In my case, for example, I was looking for a room [and] I saw an advertisement that was €700 for a single room in an apartment,” she said.

“So I contacted the guy and he said the room was his room but he was working at night so I could stay in the bed.

“He said, ‘Sometimes I will need the bed but I don't have a problem sharing the bed, I'm single’.

“The next day he was trying to ask me out on a date.”

Rent due reminder. Image: Alamy

Darlene said that most people in Ireland are very welcoming but “in the middle” there are people “trying to take advantage”.

She said she speaks for all international students when she asks for her basic human rights to be respected.

Listen back here:

Main image: Enraged man scolding the frightened woman in the background. Image: Alamy