PIMPS' PARADISE; Explosion in prostitution as Garda vice squad slashed.(News)

Byline: KEITH FALKINER

EVIL pimps are flooding Ireland with prostitutes since a crack Garda squad assigned to catch them was slashed, we can reveal.

For the past seven years Operation Quest has had vicelords on the run with the team shutting down 28 illegal sex dens in Dublin, Limerick, Carlow and Waterford in just six months last year.

But now the force has been chopped from 12 officers to just two - and with a new breed of highly-organised cyber pimps taking to the internet, Garda insiders warn we will soon be drowning in a sea of filth.

A source said: "There's no doubt that over the past six or seven years Operation Quest was having an impact on the business for pimps.

"Officers assigned to the operation had the time to keep suspected brothels under surveillance and over time catch those running them.

"But as with everything these days the operation has been hit badly by cutbacks. It is impossible to see how only two officers can deal with the high number of criminals now earning vast sums from the sex industry."

The number of girls working as prostitutes in Ireland is now estimated to be well above 1,500.

The vast majority of these are foreign women, trafficked here by criminals and their sex services are posted on escort sites across the internet.

Organising their business on the net allows pimps to steer clear of the premises they use for brothels, making it harder for gardai to make arrests.

But officers say they are powerless to deal with the explosion of these escort sites which need round-the-clock monitoring to catch the pimps.

In recent years the operation helped to snare leading pimps such as Carlow man TJ Carroll, Mark McCormick, Martin Morgan and Aidan Dorney.

All four had been making hundreds of thousands a year from their illegal business.

When Operation Quest caught up with McCormick in February 2006, officers found a spreadsheet which showed he had pocketed EUR25,000 the previous month from running brothels in Dublin.

In May last year McCormick, 22, from Newcastle, Co Down, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for running a string of brothels in the capital.

In sentencing McCormick, judge Tony Hunt described him as being at the top of the ladder in a sophisticated prostitution ring.

Carlow man TJ Carroll, one of Ireland's biggest international pimps, was snared in Wales in 2008 following co-operation between gardai and British police.

Carroll, 46, who had brothels in practically every county in Ireland and as far away as South Africa, was given a seven-year sentence for controlling prostitution and money laundering.

His co-accused Shamiela Clark was jailed for three and a half years.

Notorious Dublin pimp Martin Morgan was jailed for three years in 2008 after he was found guilty of running a brothel at Bachelors Walk in the city centre. And just last month, Dublin man Aidan Dorney, from the respectable suburb of Ranelagh, was jailed for five years for pimping activities.

Silver-haired Dorney, 39, had been renting apartments in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and ran 61 websites advertising prostitution.

But gardai say all four would not have been caught without the resources being pumped into Operation Quest. A source added: "Operations to catch these guys takes a lot of planning, time and resources to get a successful conviction.

"But there are others out there and we need to have equal resources and the time to go after them."

Gerardine Rowley of Ruhama, which works with women affected by prostitution, said the internet now poses the greatest challenge to a sex industry crackdown.

She said: "The gardai have done a great job in the past with Operation Quest and have caught a number of the top pimps but like anything else there is always going to be someone else to take their place.

"The pimps now do their business on the net and what the gardai really need is to have officers whose sole responsibility is to monitor the internet and catch those who are running brothels."

CAPTION(S):

Jailed... Shamiela Clarke Pimp... TJ Carroll Sex for sale... More than 1,500 hookers are working in Ireland Brothel... Martin Morgan